AIDS Healthcare Foundation
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) is a Los Angeles-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and advocacy services. As of 2022, it operates about 400 clinics, 69 outpatient healthcare centers, 62 pharmacies, and 22 Out of the Closet thrift stores across 15 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and 45 countries, with more than 5,000 employees, and provides care to more than 1.8 million patients. The organization's aim is to end the AIDS epidemic by ensuring access to quality healthcare, including HIV and STD testing, prescription of medications like Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), and referrals to specialty pharmacies. AHF is the largest provider of PrEP in the United States, though its founder Michael Weinstein has received criticism for his past opposition to the drug.
| Abbreviation | AHF |
|---|---|
| Formation | February 1987 |
| Founder | Chris Brownlie Michael Weinstein |
| Type | nonprofit organization |
Tax ID no. | 95-4112121 |
| Legal status | 501(c)(3) |
| Purpose | To provide medical care for people living with HIV or AIDS. The organization aims to eradicate HIV/AIDS through its network of health care centers, pharmacies, prevention and testing services, healthcare contracts and other strategic partnerships. |
| Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Coordinates | 34.098787°N 118.325725°W |
| Subsidiaries | AHF Pharmacy Out of the Closet thrift stores Positive Healthcare Housing is a Human Right Healthy Housing Foundation |
Revenue (2020) | $1,766,598,821 |
| Expenses (2020) | $1,635,146,022 |
Employees (2019) | 2,446 |
| Website | ahf |
Since 2012, AHF has become highly active in sponsoring and exclusively financing multiple high-profile ballot initiatives in two states, starting with a successful Los Angeles County initiative to require condoms in adult films (2012 Los Angeles Measure B), and then a similar statewide initiative which failed (2016 California Proposition 60). They also ran two measures seeking to cap prescription drug prices (California Proposition 61 (2016) and Ohio Issue 2 (2017)), both of which failed.
In 2017, AHF created a new organization named the Healthy Housing Foundation, which has been creating housing for homeless and low-income individuals, primarily in Los Angeles. AHF also shifted its political focus to attempting to block housing construction through lawsuits against several new projects, as well as an initiative seeking to block local development in Los Angeles (2017 Los Angeles Measure S), and two seeking to allow for the expansion of rent control in California (2018 California Proposition 10 and 2020 California Proposition 21); these three failed at the polls. Regarding the housing initiatives, critics have questioned whether the group is misusing foundation and taxpayer money by sponsoring ballot initiatives they consider unrelated to the stated mission of the organization. Weinstein argues, however, that housing is linked to a "sustainable public health structure."