5.1.07 - Pioneering Community Programs to Join AIDS Foundation

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation today announced that the Stonewall Project and Magnet, two established community health programs that serve gay men in San Francisco, will formally unite with the AIDS Foundation on July 1, 2007.

As integral parts of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, which has served gay men since 1982, Magnet and Stonewall will continue to promote healthy sexuality, provide testing for HIV and other STDs, and offer substance abuse and mental health counseling to more than 500 clients every month. Prior to the announced merger, both programs had been administered by the University of California, San Francisco Department of Psychiatry.

"The San Francisco AIDS Foundation is committed to Magnet and The Stonewall Project, sustaining their excellent level of service and deploying resources to help them expand and increase the profile of community-led models of healthcare in San Francisco and elsewhere," said Mark Cloutier, the Foundation's Executive Director. "We are eager to work with Stonewall and Magnet to improve gay men's health and bring both programs into the larger family of services provided by the Foundation."

Although HIV infection rates in San Francisco have declined in the last ten years, the city has grappled with a persistent level of new infections since 1999, nine out ten of which occur in gay men. This situation is exacerbated by inadequate physical and mental health services designed with gay men in mind, a liability in local -- and national -- healthcare which the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Magnet and Stonewall seek to correct.

"We can no longer rely on condoms as the only antidote to gay men's health," said Steven Tierney, Deputy Executive Director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and a long-time volunteer counselor at Magnet. "We're building community-led resources, because people who feel connected, whether to friends, family, or their communities make better decisions about their health."

The Stonewall Project works with methamphetamine-using men to provide counseling and treatment to reduce the harm caused by methamphetamine and supports those who want to stop using. Magnet, envisioned and staffed by community leaders and activists, provides sexually transmitted infection services in tandem with a well-appointed meeting space in the Castro, the San Francisco neighborhood which continues to have the greatest concentration of new HIV infections.

Nearly two years ago, Magnet and Stonewall began to search for a new institutional home that could bring additional resources to expand all of their programming and meet the growing demand for HIV testing, treatment for methamphetamine use, and a cultural and social space in the Castro open to all. Operating above their capacity, both programs now must refuse as many clients each day as they are able to see.

"We recognized that the Foundation had resources to help us meet demand," said Michael Siever, Director of the Stonewall Project. "The Foundation's familiarity with harm reduction, pioneered through needle exchange programs and its innovative The Speed Project, suggested a philosophical match as well."

Stonewall, Magnet and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation concluded that joining forces would result in more client interactions and the ability to replicate an excellent service model elsewhere in the U.S. The Foundation is committed to maintaining the integrity of these programs while helping promote improved health outcomes for gay and bisexual men of all colors regardless of HIV status.

For Steve Gibson, Director of Magnet since it was created in 2001, joining the AIDS Foundation initially means turning fewer people away. "Within the first few months, we'll be able to increase capacity, maximize our current resources, and serve more people." Gibson said, "In the long-term, we'll strengthen our understanding of gay men's health and how we can make an even bigger difference."

All three programs were founded and are currently sustained by local residents caught in a local crisis, though each organization takes a different approach to improving health outcomes. In considering what Magnet, Stonewall and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation have in common, Cloutier makes one request of the community:

"Ask yourselves, 'what would a healthy gay community look like?' and hold us responsible for an answer," Cloutier said.