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Collection Data
- Description
- The Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), America's oldest AIDS organization, formed in 1982, serves to educate the public about HIV/AIDS, provide care services for People with AIDS (PWAs), and advocate at all levels of government for fair AIDS policies. It is a volunteer-supported, community-based organization that provides programs to clients and members of the general public regardless of HIV status, gender, or sexual orientation. The records document the three aspects of GMHC's activities and contain correspondence, memoranda, minutes, pamphlets, photographs, posters, questionnaires, reports, surveys, video recordings, and other material. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence, memoranda, and reports regarding GMHC's safe sex education programs and client services. The collection contains electronic records.
- Names
- Gay Men's Health Crisis, Inc. (Creator)
- Dates / Origin
- Date Created: 1975 - 1999
- Library locations
- Manuscripts and Archives Division
- Shelf locator: MssCol 1126
- Topics
- AIDS (Disease) -- New York (State) -- New York
- AIDS (Disease) -- Patients -- Services for -- New York (State) -- New York
- AIDS activists -- United States -- 20th century
- Gay men -- Health -- Advocacy
- Safe sex in AIDS prevention -- Education
- Genres
- Documents
- minutes (administrative records)
- pamphlets
- posters
- questionnaires
- sound recordings
- video recordings (physical artifacts)
- brochures
- Notes
- Biographical/historical: Introduction
The Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), America's oldest AIDS organization, organized in 1982, serves to educate the public about HIV/AIDS, provide care services for People with AIDS (PWAs), and advocate at all levels of government for fair AIDS policies. It is a volunteer-supported, community-based organization that provides programs to clients and members of the general public regardless of HIV status, gender, or sexual orientation.
GMHC was founded by six gay men, Nathan Fain, Larry Kramer, Lawrence Mass, Paul Popham, Paul Rapoport, and Edmund White, at Kramer's Manhattan apartment on January 4, 1982. They had all been part of an earlier gathering at Kramer's on August 11, 1981, where Dr. Alvin Friedman-Kien discussed the "gay cancer" that was affecting their friends and lovers. Over $6,600 was raised at that meeting for research into Kaposi's sarcoma at New York University's Medical Center. When the six met in January 1982, they discussed raising more funds for research and organized GMHC's first major event at the Paradise Garage on April 8. The event was called Showers and $50,000 was raised.
While Showers was a success, the group realized that they could do more than simply raise money to help those affected. They decided to try to answer the many questions people had about the disease. The first service provided by the organization was the Hotline, which began in May as an answering machine in the apartment of volunteer, Rodger McFarlane, who later became the organization's second executive director. On the first night, 100 calls were received. While many of the questions could be answered over the phone, some of them required the help of medical, legal, and other professionals to answer. As there was no social service agency to which GMHC could direct these callers, they created the Patient Services Division to provide further help.
Service
In September, Dr. Ken Wein joined GMHC as the first Clinical Director and organized the Crisis Intervention Counselors. The Counselors assisted men who had recently fallen ill and who called the Hotline, were otherwise referred to GMHC, needed assistance maneuvering through the health care system, required help at home, or sought other support that could not be provided over the phone. McFarlane and others had been spending their spare time caring for friends and lovers who were neither able to take care of themselves at home nor represent their own best interests within the health care system. The situation in hospitals was especially critical as these men had to take on the duties of hospital workers, who refused to touch patients or enter their rooms to deliver food.
GMHC created the Buddy Program that September to consolidate the work of these men and to develop a program to train volunteers in assisting PWAs. The program began with 20 men who were on call 24 hours a day to provide assistance, but quickly grew as more men were affected by the disease. The program was staffed entirely by volunteers and initially consisted of people helping friends and lovers affected by AIDS with basic tasks such as grocery shopping, laundry, pet care, as well as spending time with the PWAs. As alarm spread about the disease and hospital staff refused to care for PWAs, Buddies also began to provide nursing care for PWAs and act as intermediaries with social and medical services. A new volunteer position, Crisis Intervention Worker (CIW), was created to assist Buddies in the facilitation of these services. A handful of registered nurses volunteered at GMHC to train people in basic care (bathing, changing, feeding, etc.) of patients.
In 1985, the volunteer position of Crisis Management Partner (CMP) was created that combined the duties of a Buddy and a CIW. CMPs were assigned to PWAs with a number of emotional and physical needs.
As the AIDS epidemic grew and more people became infected, Client Services expanded to provide recreation services and group support service programs for PWAs who were able to leave their homes. Recreation Services consisted of workshops in art, photography, writing, and bridge; trips to museums and other cultural institutions; movies; lunches; and parties. Group Support Services provided group counseling for PWAs and their care partners. These services provided a safe and informal setting to cope with the emotional and social problems associated with AIDS and fostered support networks. By 1985, there were ten groups specifically for PWAs, eleven for their care partners, as well as weekly walk-in groups for PWAs, care partners, and family; groups for children with AIDS and their families; and groups for couples dealing with the disease.
Financial Advocacy Services, Legal Services, and the Office of the Ombudsman quickly followed. These services provided free advice to PWAs, kept them abreast of changes in federal services available to them, and provided advocacy for clients with problems with the healthcare system.
As PWAs began living longer and new treatments became available, Client Services provided Nutrition Counseling, offered acupunture and chiropractic services, and expanded its Recreation Services to include hot meals five days a week and free theater tickets. Additional Support Groups were created to meet the needs of communities within the larger AIDS community including women, people of color, and people with chemical dependencies.
By 1987, GMHC had created a position for a Deputy Executive Director for Program Operations which, following a restructuring of the organization in 1989, assumed responsibility for the administration of all of the Client Services programs: Client Advocacy, Education Department, Nutrition and Recreation Services, Legal Services, the Ombudsman Department, and the Volunteer Office.
In 1990, the passage of the Ryan White CARE Act allowed GMHC to expand existing programs and create new ones. Within the next few years, GMHC created a number of programs which included a permanent Deaf AIDS Project (DAP), the Lesbian AIDS Project, and the Tuberculosis Education and Treatment Support Program. By 1993, Education once again became its own department, with its head reporting directly to the Executive Director.
Education
With the discovery of HIV in 1983, GMHC began its mission of education in earnest. Safe sex brochures and guidelines were published and distributed to bathhouses and gay bars. GMHC established information tables around New York City with literature about AIDS and volunteers who could answer questions about AIDS and GMHC's services. Publication of the Health Letter began, providing statistics and research updates. GMHC was recognized as a leader in providing accurate and up-to-date information on AIDS and was consulted by the media, doctors, and health organizations.
In 1984 the Centers for Disease Control asked GMHC to assist them in creating public conferences on AIDS and in April 1985 they were part of the organizing committee of the first International AIDS Conference in Atlanta.
GMHC's AIDS Prevention program was developed in March 1985 once condoms were proven to be an effective means of preventing HIV transmission. It created programs to communicate safe sex practices to the gay community and the growing number of other groups affected by the disease.
By October 1986, GMHC's client base had expanded to include heterosexual men and women, hemophiliacs, intravenous drug-users, and children. This led to innovations in AIDS education by GMHC, including the Medical Information Department which published Treatment Issues and provided information on new therapies; created sexually explicit material such as Safe Sex Comix which showed that safe sex could be fun; and created outreach programs designed to adapt the original sex education classes to African-Americans, Latinos, and lesbians.
The Education Department began an audiovisual program in the mid-1980s which developed the weekly television show Living with AIDS; produced public service announcements and safe sex videos which were shown at safe sex forums, sex clubs, and porn theatres; and created an oral history project in which some founders and staff of GMHC were interviewed in the late 1980s.
In the 1990s the department produced safe sex guidelines for lesbians; created programs for HIV-negative gay and bisexual men; expanded programs aimed at African-American and Latino men; and improved education for teens.
Advocacy
GMHC's advocacy work began in October 1983 with the funding of litigation brought by the Lambda Legal Defense Fund in the first AIDS discrimination case. A New York physician, Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, was threatened with eviction from his office because he was treating PWAs and the building's board felt that this would decrease property values. The case was decided in Sonnabend's favor.
Timothy J. Sweeney, who joined the staff of GMHC in 1986 as the Deputy Executive Director of Policy, created the Public Policy Department. The Department began to fight for increased funding for AIDS research, health care for PWAs, prevention programs, and greater civil rights protections for everyone affected by AIDS. The Department became an advocate at all levels of government for fair AIDS policies and was a leading member of the AIDS Action Council, the New York City HIV Health and Human Services Planning Council, and other groups of AIDS organizations.
Conclusion
At the time of this writing (2009), GMHC still provides many of the services for which it was created; but as AIDS has changed, so have its programs. The organization was created at a time when no one knew what AIDS was or how it was spread and it responded to the needs of its clients as they arose. In the beginning, GMHC provided hands-on, intensive care for PWAs in hospitals and their homes, disseminated timely and available information about AIDS to the affected populations, and provided legal advice. GMHC still provides these services, but now focuses on helping PWAs and HIV positive people to live healthy and productive lives; advocating government for fair policies and scientifically sound public health programs; and solving the legal, financial, and many other issues facing its clients.
- Content: The records of the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) document the three aspects of the organization's activities and contain brochures, correspondence, memoranda, minutes, pamphlets, photographs, posters, questionnaires, reports, sound recordings, surveys, video recordings, and other material. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence, memoranda, and reports regarding GMHC's safe sex education programs and client services.
The collection is arranged by the departments of the organization, beginning with the Executive Director and then continuing alphabetically from the Board of Directors through Women's Education Services. The largest series is the Education Department which contains material on GMHC's groundbreaking safe sex and AIDS prevention programs, dissemination of AIDS information, and training programs for health care workers. The Client Services records contain minutes of Buddy Teams, Crisis Intervention Workers, and Crisis Management Partners meetings. These minutes contain detailed information on how the volunteers assisted PWAs, the rapid spread of AIDS in the early days of the epidemic, and the physical and emotional toll these had on the PWAs and the volunteers. More information about each department can be found in the series notes.
Electronic records can be found throughout the collection, though the bulk of the computer files represent the work of the Education Department's various units. Of note are the files of Franklin Carson, the interim director for the department in the early 1990s. His electronic files fill in a gap in the paper records of his predecessor and successor. The files of this department also include components of the Hotline's database, which can emulate the database used by hotline counselors when answering caller's questions and directing them to services. The database contains information regarding doctors, social services, and businesses that supported or served PWAs. The electronic records also document GMHC's efforts to disseminate information through issues of the organization's newsletters AIDS Clinical Update and Treatment Issues.
The records as a whole reflect the explosive growth of GMHC and often contain overlapping or similar material within and across departments. During the first ten years of its existence, the organization had to react quickly to the changing needs of its clients by expanding and creating departments, new programs, and positions. As a result of this, some series may contain material similar to another series. For example, GMHC's work with specific populations, such as prisoners, intravenous drug users, or the hearing impaired may be found across the collection as their needs were addressed through public policy, direct services, topical broadcast television productions, and discussed in administrative correspondence and board meeting minutes. Also, one unit may contain material relating to another unit due to GMHC's restructuring of departments. Occurrences of significant overlap between departments are described at the series or subseries levels.
- Physical Description
- Extent: 169.68 linear feet (408 boxes, 3 oversized folders, 1 tube). 14.18 megabytes (2,671 computer files). 916 video recordings, 221 audio recordings
- Type of Resource
- Text
- Identifiers
- NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b18934683
- MSS Unit ID: 1126
- Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 212f6f20-16fb-013d-11c7-0242ac110003
