Posted on April 27, 2011

New York Community Trust Awards $1.3 Million for HIV/AIDS Prevention, Testing Initiatives

The New York Community Trust has announced grants totaling $1.3 million to twenty-six organizations working to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS and improve care for those with the disease.

Awarded through the trust's New York City AIDS Fund, the grants include $75,000 to the Red Hook Initiative for an HIV-prevention program targeting minority adolescents and young adults in Brooklyn; $50,000 to the Asian and Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS (APICHA) to help prepare AIDS service organizations to become federally qualified health centers; and $35,000 to the Muslim Women's Institute for Research and Development to open a HIV-testing program for the Muslim community. The fund also awarded $50,000 to the African Services Committee to educate African immigrants about new HIV-testing regulations and get more immigrants tested; $38,000 to the Child Center of New York for a peer-led HIV-prevention program for Hispanic teenagers; and $30,000 to the Correctional Association of New York to monitor and improve health care for inmates with HIV/AIDS in New York state prisons.

"Research shows that people living with AIDS taking medications to control their illness are far less likely to spread HIV," said the AIDS Fund chairman Len McNally, who is also a program director for health and people with special needs at the trust. "With our multi-pronged approach of simultaneously funding improvements in policy, treatment, and organizational management, we can control the spread of a disease that once ravaged our city and improve the lives of those infected."