Reach and Services to Broaden

Move Addresses Growing Health Issues for Some With HIV-AIDS

The Whitman-Walker Clinic, the region's biggest provider of HIV-AIDS services, announced yesterday that it will expand medical care as it moves toward becoming a comprehensive health center.

Social service programs will be refocused to better support patients' health needs, and up to a fourth of the 240-person staff will be reassigned or let go.

Simultaneously, Whitman-Walker will start a public awareness campaign aimed at groups hit hardest by the AIDS epidemic.

"We plan a return to aggressive grass-roots outreach in high-risk communities," executive director Donald Blanchon said. "We want to be on the right street corners with the right information addressing people who are truly at risk."

Whitman-Walker is remaking itself and hoping to draw more patients while recovering from a budget crisis that forced deep cuts and layoffs in 2005. The clinic ended last year about $300,000 in the red, a fraction of the $950,000 deficit it ran two years ago but not enough progress for Blanchon to call the $22 million operation financially viable.

The clinic's transformation reflects the expanding health issues of people for whom HIV and AIDS are now more chronic diseases than death sentences because of anti-retroviral drugs. But the added years are coming with complications not typically seen in middle-aged people, such as osteoporosis and heart disease.

The change also responds to the epidemic's spread through the city across race, sex, age and geography. Blanchon cited a recent report by the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration documenting the incidence in the African American community.

"For us, it's stand up and deliver," he said before announcing the new message campaign, dubbed Project RED for reach, educate and decrease. Its HIV information will target gay men of color as well as those younger than 25 and heterosexual black men and women younger than 40. The first ad runs today under the headline "change or perish."

"The status quo isn't working," it says. "If we don't change how we do things, more area residents will die."

Now in its 36th year, Whitman-Walker expects to care for more than 13,000 patients this year at its three sites in the District and Northern Virginia.