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Sunday, November 30, 2014

AIDS Health Fdtn Recruiting SF Patient via Postcards


Let's look at the snail-mail postcard campaign that hit many LGBT and straight mailboxes this weekend from the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. The image above is the front of the postcard Mike and I received in Saturday's postal mail delivery.


The back of the postcard features info about services offered along with the days and times the health center is open.

How huge was the revenue figure raked in last year by Michael Weinstein's behemoth AHF? It was $514,000,000 according to their latest IRS 990 filing. They have an incentive to sign up new clients for their various offerings of medical care to keep insurance and other dollars flowing to the organization, is the cynical take.

However, the upside of a new healthcare facility in the Castro is that for the expanded number of area LGBT residents who aren't in care now, they have another option to receive medical services and maintain sexual-health wellness.

I think it's been a full decade since Weinstein and his Los Angeles based nonprofit decided to penetrate the San Francisco AIDS community and lucrative HIV medical delivery market, opening thrift stores with testing on-site, then direct medical care and patient advocacy services and ruffling plenty of feathers of local longtime peacock groups.

For all the years they've had operations in the city, AHF simply hasn't developed good relations with establish groups or grassroots advocates particularly prevention workers and HIV negative dudes taking Truvada as pre-exposure prophylaxis. Will the new facility and outreach effort improve AHF's relationship with locals?

Neither Mike nor I can recall ever receiving a postal mail pitch like this regarding HIV testing and primary care services. Let us know if another nonprofit has ever used postcards to drum up AIDS business in San Francisco.

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