Alliance on the Move provides thousands of free and confidential HIV and HCV tests to New Yorkers every year. On World AIDS Day, Spectrum News 1 and CBS 2 NY reported on their outreach and community conversations in Harlem. You can watch the Spectrum News 1 segment here, and the two unique CBS 2 NY segments here and here.
Verywell Health's HIV Series Features the Personal Stories of Four Alliance Team Members
The medically-reviewed Verywell Health team collaborated with Alliance for Positive Change to create “Health Divide: HIV” to share facts, social impact and socio-economic analyses of HIV. The series features intimate profile stories of Eugene Eppes, Ismael Ruiz, Lillian Anglada (for whom our Luis and Lillian Outreach Center is named) and Nicky Bravo. Read their moving stories for a better sense of the people behind the diagnosis. Thank you, Nicky, Lillian, Ismael and Eugene!
Alliance's CEO and Executive Director Sharen Duke Named to PoliticsNY's Power Players in Health Care List
Our Executive Director & CEO Sharen Duke, who has shepherded our work since our founding, was recognized as a Power Player in Health Care by PoliticsNY. This recognition is a reflection not only of her leadership but of the amazing Alliance staff and Peers who have supported literally hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers’ on their path to positive change over the past 30 years.
Alliance Training Coordinator Diane Delph-Tinglin's Featured in Queens Ledger
Diane Delph-Tinglin is a fixture at Alliance for Positive Change, leading Peer trainings, helping the organization raise funds for amazing job placement programs, and offering support to everyone who walks through our doors. On World AIDS Day, she shared he story of being diagnosed with HIV in 2009, and how the diagnosis mobilized her to do amazing work for HIV positive, and negative, New Yorkers. Read the story on Diane here.
As seen in AMNY: Peer graduate Luis Viera's "My journey as someone with HIV"
On the eve of World AIDS Day, Alliance Peer Luis Viera shared his story and what World AIDS Day means to him. Luis has been an amazing resource, helping countless HIV positive New Yorkers navigate their own personal journeys. Read Luis’s full op-ed here.
Alliance's Bernice Cowell on WBAI 99.5 FM New York's Driving Forces Thanksgiving Show
On Thanksgiving Day, Alliance's Bernice Cowell gave a great interview with Driving Forces about celebrating an emotional Thanksgiving – her first in a real home, with her children – thanks to resources she found at Alliance. Bernice's interview can be heard here.
Honoring Transgender Awareness Week: Spotlight on Alliance’s Lexii Foxx
“I’ve been doing prevention training since way before I knew it was called that,” says Lexii Foxx, a Peer intern with Alliance for Positive Change. Lexii credits her intersectionality and personal journey with making her a strong ally for New Yorkers in need.
“Sometimes it’s just really hard for transwomen to feel they’re being understood. I’m black, queer, and trans, so that’s a lot of intersectionality,” Lexii says. Her identity makes her an authentic voice as she provides help to a plethora of New Yorkers. At Alliance, Lexii works with almost 30 people a week, while also helping co-facilitate women’s groups at Alliance.
Growing up in a conservative town in North Carolina, Lexii notes, “My family loved me, but was literally embarrassed to have me be around at family events.”
She knew she was a woman from a young age. She dropped out of high school to live in a small house with dozens of friends she met at a drag show. They called themselves the “Chanelles/Thug Misses,” and worked as escorts for survival.
Lexii lived in dozens of states in her teens and twenties, working as a model and a sex worker, all while teaching her friends about safer sex.
Transgender Awareness Week is a week when transgender people and their allies take action to bring attention to the community by educating the public about who transgender people are, sharing their stories and experiences, and advancing advocacy around the issues of prejudice, discrimination, and violence that affect the transgender community. For Lexii, this means “educating children on who LGBTQ+ people are, and breaking that generational stigma.”
“I believe you have to start at the root, which is our kids, and help young trans kids out, make them confident in their true selves. And if they want to transition young, make it easier for them.”
It also means decriminalizing sex work, which makes transgender women disproportionate targets of violence. 2021 is already the deadliest year on record for transgender people in America, with 45 reported murders, according to the Human Rights Campaign, disproportionately amongst Black and Latinx people.
Decriminalizing sex work is also a barrier to services. “Being a sex worker helped me reach out to other sex workers, helping them get tested, use condoms, and get access to counseling,” Lexii says.
Lexii was involved in helping people before she joined Alliance, but says that “Alliance is the best thing that has happened for me. I feel like I am a confident woman walking out the door to start every day because of Alliance.”
Lexii started working with Alliance when she was referred from the Peer program.
Lexii Foxx
“She’s amazing, and she’s going to do amazing work,” says Malika Minott, Prevention Assistant Manager at Alliance, and also a graduate of Alliance’s PATH to Jobs peer-training program. “Lexii opened herself up to our work and participated in workshops, trainings, and now, she does wellness checks, reminder calls, therapeutic check-ins, and really invests in people’s lives as a Peer.”
Working for leaders like Malika at Alliance has fueled and refreshed Lexii, and allowed her to be a shining star and public health educator. “I’ve noticed that everyone at Alliance goes the extra mile for their clients,” Lexii says. “I feel like I’ve found family here.”
Transgender awareness is essential to Lexii because people who don’t know openly trans people “are afraid of us, or have a stigma against us due to negative media, TV shows, and movies that make a mockery of us. The fact is, we are human and we deserve to coexist in life.”
To Lexii, it’s not just on members of the LGBTQ+ community to support transgender people. “Cisgender people who have platforms should offer them to us and help with job readiness. Help us have the same opportunities as anyone else,” she says.
Transgender Awareness Week takes place from November 13-19, leading up to the Transgender Day of Remembrance on November 20, a day to memorialize those who have been killed as a result of transphobia. Please join Alliance in our efforts to support and honor those lost on this day and throughout the year.
WABC Radio: Al Ostapeck on this year’s International Overdose Awareness Day
On the eve of International Awareness Day, Assistant Manager of Harm Reduction at Alliance LES Harm Reduction Center Al Ostapeck spoke to WABC Radio’s Dominic Carter. Dominic shared very moving, personal stories and Al discussed the importance of in-person harm reduction services that connect people to services that start with—but go far beyond—harm reduction.
As Al said, “We all fall down in life, do you get back up?” Since 1990, Alliance has helped New Yorkers living with HIV and other chronic health conditions get back up.
NY1 Features Alliance on the Move in honor of Recovery Month
On Thursday, September 30, 2021, Spectrum News NY1 was on hand to cover Alliance for Positive Change’s LGBTQ+ carnival and resource fair outside of CASA Washington Heights. Participants came together to celebrate LGBTQ+ pride, make arts and crafts projects, and access substance use support services, free COVID-19, HIV, and STI testing through our Alliance on the Move mobile van.
The event took place during the last day of National Recovery Month, but Alliance’s work continues every weekday at its six locations and its mobile unit Alliance on the Move every Monday through Thursday.
Alliance for Positive Change Awarded Grants to Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Access
—Funding will expand equitable vaccine access among New Yorkers disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, including low-income and BIPOC communities—
—Amid the Delta variant, the need for increasing vaccination rates has taken on new urgency—
(New York, N.Y.)—Amid the rise in Delta variant-related coronavirus cases, Alliance for Positive Change, a nonprofit that has been working to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic for three decades, has been awarded grants from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Fund for Public Health. The funding will help to reduce preventable COVID-19 infections and death among New Yorkers disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, including low-income and BIPOC communities.
Support from HRSA will advance goals to stop the spread of COVID-19 by implementing strategies that Alliance has deployed for decades in the fight against HIV/AIDS, including leveraging partnerships and community outreach to identify and engage New Yorkers who are vaccine hesitant. In partnership with Housing Works, Argus Community Inc., and BOOM!Health, the grant will enlist Alliance’s corps of peers to serve as community vaccine ambassadors, and involve weekly discussion groups, outreach through Alliance on the Move -- the organization’s mobile van, development of educational material, assistance with scheduling vaccine appointments, and employ social media to reach new audiences.
The Fund for Public Health’s Vaccine Equity Partner Engagement Project supports equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. The grant will strengthen Alliance’s ability to disseminate tailored, community-informed, and culturally relevant messaging about vaccines to address concerns in disproportionately impacted communities, and provide one-on-one navigation services to improve access to vaccinations in Central Harlem.
“Alliance is eager to implement the outreach and education strategies we have learned over the past three decades as an organization serving New Yorkers with HIV and other chronic health conditions to expand equitable vaccine access amid the pandemic,” says Arianne Watson, Director of Outreach & Community Engagement at Alliance for Positive Change. “Tailored vaccine messaging in communities disproportionately impacted by the pandemic will be instrumental to advancing the fight against COVID-19.”
The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis that has presented significant obstacles in efforts to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic. New data demonstrates that people living with HIV who become infected with the coronavirus are at extremely high risk of severe illness from COVID-19. HIV testing—our most important tool for early detection that saves lives—has decreased by as much as 45% nationwide. People have lost access to care due to lockdowns and increased economic hardship, while the overburdened and under-resourced healthcare system has struggled to keep up.
About Alliance for Positive Change
Alliance for Positive Change supports lasting, positive change among low-income New Yorkers living with HIV/AIDS and other chronic illnesses. Focusing on underserved communities of color, our culturally competent, multilingual services remove barriers to accessing quality medical care, managing addiction, escaping homelessness, and achieving economic mobility. We address the underlying issues that contribute to health inequity through individualized, full-service support based on a harm reduction approach designed to help New Yorkers lead healthier, more self-sufficient lives. Because everyone deserves the chance to feel better, live better, and do better. Learn more at www.alliance.nyc.