Mission Statement
Board of Directors
Annual Report
Employment
Message from the Executive Director

Founded in April 1997, the HIV/AIDS Legal Services Alliance, Inc. (HALSA) provides free comprehensive civil legal services to persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWH/A) in Los Angeles County, California. Now an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, HALSA began as a collaborative legal project of five community based HIV/AIDS and legal service organizations: AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), AIDS Service Center (ASC), the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center, the Los Angeles County Bar Association, and Public Counsel.

These providers recognized that the existing legal service delivery system for persons living with HIV and AIDS (PLWH/A) was fragmented and that clients were not being well served. In creating HALSA, these HIV/AIDS and legal organizations agreed to collaborate and brought under one roof the legal services necessary to address the needs of PLWH/As. Unlike other legal providers, HALSA's sole purpose and reason for being is to provide legal services to Los Angeles County's PLWH/As.

Today, HALSA's Board, staff, and volunteers pursue its mission to provide critically needed HIV and AIDS legal services and education that is of high quality, culturally sensitive and multi-faceted to those living with HIV and AIDS throughout Los Angeles County and related HIV/AIDS legal education to individuals, professionals and employers.

HALSA ultimately seeks to improve both the quality of life and health outcomes of persons living with HIV and AIDS. HALSA is able to accomplish this by minimizing the barriers, which prevent PLWH/A from accessing health care due to immigration concerns and/or lack of health care benefits or those who face discrimination from primary care providers. HALSA also accomplishes this goal by minimizing barriers, which impact the subsistence needs of a PLWH/A such as income and housing.

Persons living with HIV and AIDS encounter a range of direct barriers to accessing health care. These include:

• Health-related discrimination by health care providers
• Breaches of confidentiality and HIV testing rights by health care providers
• Problems with accessing/using public medical benefits
• Problems with accessing/using private health insurance
• Barriers to employment-based health coverage
• Barriers created by AIDS-related incapacitation
• Barriers in helping non-citizens access health care and health care benefits

In general, poverty remains a constant thread exacerbating the needs of HALSA's target population. Legal services can address this issue of poverty by helping clients who are eligible apply for and maintain income-related benefits such as SSI and SSD. Legal services can lessen fears associated with returning to work for persons living with HIV and AIDS who are healthy and responding well to their treatment regimens. Legal services also facilitates access to needed benefits and health care by recent immigrants. Finally, HALSA can also help clients maintain stable housing by preventing eviction and addressing landlord/tenant disputes in appropriate cases. In each of these ways, legal services help clients address the fundamental needs of daily living associated with the basic needs for food and shelter. As these needs are met, persons living with HIV and AIDS are able to address other needs more directly associated with their health and health care.

HALSA has collaborative relationships with numerous HIV/AIDS-related providers throughout the County. HALSA currently maintains approximately 30 outreach sites, co-located with HIV/AIDS medical and social service providers. These organizations provide a broad array of case management and essential services (e.g., food bank, transportation, dental care, etc.) to their mutual clients. HALSA does not provide case management and therefore it greatly benefits clients to be connected with one of these many organizations as they have the knowledge and expertise to address many of the barriers described above. For HALSA clients who are not yet linked into the HIV continuum of care, staff refer and link their clients with these services, and in so doing, do not duplicate existing services.

The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Office of AIDS Programs and Policy approximate 54,000 persons living with HIV & AIDS in Los Angeles County. Of this, 9,000 people do not know their HIV status and do not access primary health care. Of clients who access Ryan White Care Act funds in the county, at least 1/3 do not qualify for Medi-Cal.

In the county, the epidemic continues prevalent among males, people of color, and men who have sex with men. Women living with HIV/AIDS now represent 14% of the county's epidemic. Latinos represent 37% of recent cases as compared to 28% of persons living with AIDS in 1993. African Americans now represent 22% of recent cases as compared to 20% in 1993 and only 9% of the general population. Los Angeles County has the second highest number of cumulative AIDS cases in the nation, second to New York City.

The number of persons reported to be living with AIDS has increased 100% since 1993 and it is estimated that the number of people living with HIV who do not know they have HIV is as high as an additional 25,000 to 35,000. The need is very high and the demographics are ever changing.

HALSA is confronted with a variety of challenges today. Issues of privacy, confidentiality and HIV/AIDS - related stigma and discrimination still exist and yet, are more subtle and complex than ever before, discouraging testing, healthy relationships, fear of accessing either preventative or treatment services. HALSA provides a safe environment where persons living with HIV and AIDS can seek assistance that will lead to access of other social and medical services.

Sincerely,