Dear GMHC community,
June 5 marks the 40th year of the HIV epidemic in the United States. On this date in 1981, the CDC issued a report about a rare pneumonia in five young gay men in Los Angeles that would later be connected to HIV. GMHC (originally founded as Gay Men’s Health Crisis) would launch one year later in response to the burgeoning epidemic in New York City.
Since then, we have made extraordinary progress towards ending the HIV epidemic. Our contributions helped New York City become one of the first cities to reach the 90-90-90 HIV targets set by the United Nations (90 percent of all people with HIV know their status, 90 percent of all people diagnosed with HIV are on treatment, and 90 percent of all people diagnosed with HIV who are on treatment are virally suppressed). Our prevention programs have also helped reduce new HIV infections to historic lows in New York City. In 2019, that figure fell to a historic low of 1,772.
GMHC is among the pioneers of the comprehensive approach to HIV services that is now a widely used model around the world. In addition to prevention and care, we advocate for policy changes at the local, state, and national levels to ensure the rights of people living with HIV. Our research program ACRIA is also yielding new discoveries about HIV and aging and informing interventions to mitigate challenges faced by older adults living with the disease.
We are launching this monthly digital newsletter to keep you engaged with our progress to end the AIDS epidemic.
Welcome to “GMHC At a Glance.”
