Clinic Opens At Hell's Kitchen Harm Prevention Center

HELL'S KITCHEN, NY — New Yorkers that face homelessness, are affected by HIV/AIDS and are using drugs have a new resource for medical care in Hell's Kitchen that combines primary care with harm prevention.

Housingworks celebrated the opening of its new federally licensed medical facility Wednesday at the nonprofit's Ginny Shubert Center for Harm Reduction West 37th Street near Eighth Avenue. The facility will allow people involved with the nonprofits harm reduction programs and social services such as a syringe exchange and overdose prevention training to easily access primary medical care in the same building.

"Housing Works understands that to move New York closer to our goal of ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2020, we must provide even more comprehensive, integrated, and coordinated care for our community. This new harm reduction health center will do just that, focusing on our most vulnerable communities and for the first time having primary care coupled with harm reduction services at the same facility," Charles King, CEO and co-founder of Housing Works, said in a statement.

The combination of primary care services such as Hepatitis C treatment with programs such as a needle exchange is an uncommon approach in the United States, Max Sepulveda, Housing Works' managing director for harm reduction, said during a tour of the facility Wednesday. Housing Works' West 37th Street center services 1,200 unique clients per year, and the nonprofit hopes that many will seek care at the building's clinic, Sepulveda said.

Clients who use the clinic do not need to have health insurance, but it is preferred, Sepulveda said Wednesday. Many of the people who utilize Housing Works' needle exchange program at the center are not required to give their names.

Staff at the clinic administer medication to many clients on a supervised basis and keep the drugs at the center, which often convinces pharmaceutical companies to provide expensive prescription drugs that the companies fear may be re-sold on the black market. The clinic is also staffed with behavioral health specialists, nurses and physicians.

Bill, a Housing Works client, said that the new medical center helps him stay on schedule with his medications and helped him avoid the long waits at hospital emergency rooms.

"I've been in and out of other programs that didn't work," Bill said. "You get frustrated and think there's no way to get help... I'm more happy than ever before."