L.A.-based group takes over AIDS support in Valley

This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press
Monday, September 1, 2008.

By James Rufus Koren
Valley Press Staff Writer

LANCASTER - The Antelope Valley Hope Foundation, one of the Valley's major sources of AIDS treatment and prevention services, has closed its doors, but a Los Angeles-based nonprofit has stepped in to continue providing those services.

The AIDS Project Los Angeles, or APLA, took over the Hope Foundation and its services on Aug. 1. APLA has kept the staff and location of the foundation, which closed its doors July 31 amid financial troubles and a county audit that revealed poor management practices.

"It's a really great opportunity for APLA," said Craig Thompson, the project's executive director. "APLA has significantly more resources than AV Hope did … We're going to build HIV/AIDS awareness but also HIV/AIDS support, which will ultimately result in financial support.

"It's not going to be immediate, and it's not going to be easy, but there are great opportunities."

For several years, APLA has been providing dental care and free groceries to AIDS patients in the Antelope Valley, but the agency has dramatically expanded its role in the Antelope Valley with its takeover of the Hope Foundation, Thompson said.

"We now do case management, treatment education and prevention education," Thompson said. APLA also has a contract with Los Angeles County to organize other agencies and community groups, he said.

"We'll be organizing not just people who provide AIDS services, but churches, civic groups, schools," Thompson said.

While Thompson said he is excited about APLA's expansion of services in the high desert, he also said the Antelope Valley has challenges not found in the rest of Los Angeles County.

The AIDS epidemic in the Antelope Valley is "not what I would call on the scale and scope of what you would see in an inner-city epidemic," Thompson said, but the Valley does have the highest rates of infection from injection drug use and heterosexual contact, according to the APLA.

In all, more than 60,000 Los Angeles County residents have AIDS, according to the APLA. The Antelope Valley is second only to South Los Angeles in the percentage of black residents infected with AIDS.

"HIV is an epidemic among the poor, people of color and gay men," Thompson said. "The Antelope Valley has its share of low-income folks and people of color."

Despite that, Thompson said AIDS awareness is lacking in the Antelope Valley.

"HIV awareness and HIV education in the Antelope Valley are perhaps not as prevalent as in greater Los Angeles County," he said. "Education and awareness in the AV have been a challenge."

That's partly because of the Antelope Valley's traditionally conservative attitudes, he said.

"When we're talking about HIV, we have to talk about sex and we have to talk about drug use," he said. "We want to talk to people about safer sex and not sharing needles. Those are not the easiest topics to talk about anywhere, but especially in more conservative areas."

There are also more tangible concerns, including the Antelope Valley's massive size compared to metropolitan Los Angeles County and its shortage of medical facilities, Thompson said.

"Los Angeles County needs to think about the Antelope Valley, in some ways, differently than it does about the HIV response in other areas," Thompson said. "The rural nature of the AV, the great expanses of area, the lack of significant health infrastructure. It's a significant epidemic caused by a poor and underfunded health system and the rural nature of the Antelope Valley."

Because of the Valley's massive size, Thompson said some AIDS outreach methods that work in other parts of the county don't do the trick.

For instance, buying enough billboards to advertise throughout the Valley would be unaffordable, he said.

"So in the AV, we're taking an approach of looking at groups that are hardest hit," he said. Those groups are gay men of color and their sex partners, both male and female, as well as injection drug users.

Part of APLA's role as an organizer of other Antelope Valley AIDS service providers - including AIDS Healthcare Foundation, The Catalyst Foundation, High Desert Health System and Tarzana Treatment Centers - will be to lobby Los Angeles County as well as the state and federal governments to provide more medical resources in the Antelope Valley, Thompson said.

"Like AV Hope, (other providers) are underfunded," he said. "We're also working from an advocacy perspective to make sure the Antelope Valley gets its fair share of resources."

Already, Thompson said the county Department of Health is starting to recognize the shortage of AIDS services in the Valley.

"I expect good things to be happening in the future."

APLA is now operating the Hope Foundation's offices, at 45127 10th St. West.

jkoren@avpress.com

© 2008 Antelope Valley Press