2023 Impact Update
“At Alliance, I found a community where I felt supported and believed in. I also found my ultimate calling in life: helping others facing similar challenges.”
—CELESTE, ALLIANCE PEER SUPERHERO
IN 2023, POSITIVE CHANGE TOOK ON NEW MEANING AT ALLIANCE, AS WE EMBARKED ON AN INTENSIVE STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS TO TAKE OUR IMPACT TO NEW HEIGHTS IN 2024 AND BEYOND. OUR GUIDING IMPERATIVE: REIMAGINE, REDESIGN, AND RECOMMIT.
You might wonder why, after 30+ years of successfully delivering positive change to help low-income New Yorkers navigate systemic inequities and achieve well-being, we would pursue an organizational transformation.
While re-emerging from the pandemic’s disruptions to our city, our participants, and our in-person service model, we realized we had gained valuable insights from the creative adaptations we’d made throughout the crisis. We knew those insights could inform positive changes within our organization, including:
+ Reinvigorating our multidisciplinary team-based service approach to more expansively support low-income New Yorkers in improving their health.
+ Engaging each Alliance participant in multiple, highly coordinated services that address the social determinants that most strongly influence health outcomes.
+ Deepening and expediting services at all six of our community service sites.
Reimagine, Redesign, and Recommit was an inclusive process that engaged our frontline staff and Peer Workers to think deeply about how to make Alliance even more responsive and effective. We received guidance from a skilled consultant who helps organizations do their best work to achieve social change.
After a year of intensive planning, we launched the Reimagine, Redesign, and Recommit pilot at our Keith Haring Harlem Center in January 2024. We’re already seeing increased participant enrollment and other positive effects.
We hope you’ll take pride in knowing your support yielded countless positive changes throughout 2023—with much more to come in 2024, rooted in Alliance’s strong financial standing and unwavering commitment to the health of all New Yorkers.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTNERSHIP!
ALLEN ZWICKLER SHAREN I. DUKE Board Chair Executive Director/CEO
Redesigning for Even Greater Impact
Alliance’s year of strategic redesign leveraged our core strengths—including Peer-delivered services and a harm reduction ethos—to create an enhanced service delivery approach that takes our impact to the next level by providing:
+ Multidisciplinary Care Teams that rapidly connect each Alliance participant with all the services needed to improve their well-being.
+ Guided referrals that make it even faster and easier to access Alliance’s multitude of services—as well as external resources like medical care.
+ A consistent set of core services at all six Alliance sites, including individualized care management, food and nutrition services, harm reduction, and recovery supports.
+ An agency-wide standard of care to ensure that every Alliance participant gets the right mix of services to navigate systemic inequities and access the level of quality care every person deserves.
STANDING UP FOR HEALTH EQUITY AND ACCESS
In 2023, Alliance continued our vigorous multiyear engagement with the Save New York’s Safety Net statewide coalition to oppose an illadvised Medicaid pharmacy benefit “carve-out” that drastically cut essential funding to Alliance and many other safety-net health providers.
We diligently fought to prevent these cuts— gathering dozens of Alliance staff, Peer Workers, and allies to speak out at rallies and in legislative meetings in Albany; amplifying our stance in interviews, opinion pieces, and a letter to the editor by Alliance’s CEO, Sharen Duke, published in The Wall Street Journal; and a social media campaign with our coalition partners.
We were deeply disappointed by the carveout’s passage in May 2023. But our collective advocacy helped secure nearly $300 million in reinvestment funds that enable Alliance and
When the redesign pilot concludes in mid-2024, we will phase in the redesign at all our sites by reorganizing our work into four interconnected impact areas:
Outreach, Linkage to Care, and Food and Nutrition Services
Care Coordination and Treatment
Adherence Services
Harm Reduction and Recovery Support, including MedicationAssisted Treatment
Peer Worker Trainings, Economic Mobility Opportunities, and Evidence-based Health Promotion Groups
other providers to sustain essential services such as care coordination, patient navigation, and treatment adherence support. Our attention has turned toward making this funding permanent and ensuring that the funding levels compensate for the monies lost due to the carve-out.
Thank you for standing with us in demanding equitable health resources for our communities.
A still from The New York Times harm reduction video in which Alliance’s Harm Reduction Project Manager Joel Teron and Care Manager Justin McAnulty demonstrate how to reverse an overdose.
Spreading Harm Reduction Far and Wide
In 2023, The New York Times invited Alliance to collaborate on a how-to video on administering the overdose reversal medication, Narcan. This recognition of our expertise enabled us to reach a global audience with life-saving information. As our reputation grew in 2023, our harm reduction team was interviewed by major media outlets, including Crain’s New York and USA Today. Alliance delivers on the promise of positive change for people who use drugs, people seeking treatment, and people in recovery via:
+ Full-scale harm reduction, from overdose prevention tools and training to sterile syringe services that reduce HIV and hepatitis B/C transmission.
+ Medication-Assisted Treatment.
+ Coaching, support groups, and caring community for people at any stage in their harm reduction and/or recovery journey.
273,000+ sterile syringes distributed— a 42% increase over 2022.
2,748 overdose reversal trainings and Narcan kits distributed.
152 lifesaving overdose reversals using Alliance’s harm reduction kits, as reported by community members.
A BIG YEAR FOR WOMEN’S PROGRAMMING
From executive leadership through our directorlevel team, 69% of Alliance’s 29 leaders are people of color and 69% are women, so we’re particularly thrilled to share two major updates on our women’s programming.
In August 2023, Alliance completed our three-year Black Women
First Ryan White HRSA Special Project of National Significance (SPNS) initiative to resource Black women living with HIV to achieve viral load suppression and other health improvements. As one of just 12 organizations awarded this prestigious grant, Alliance earned special recognition for serving more women than any other grantee. Our 77-page manual describing our innovative approach was highlighted on HRSA’s website so organizations nationwide can learn from our model.
In mid-2023, Alliance was selected for a federal funding allocation to support our new Accessing Options for Opioid Management program, which expands women’s access to trauma-informed harm reduction and substance use treatment. In the spending bill signed by President Biden in March 2024, Alliance was awarded a $500,000 Congressionally Directed Spending allocation, thanks to the stalwart leadership of US Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. Alliance will greatly expand our 2024 programming for cisgender and transgender women, while intensifying our impact on the opioid crisis.
Being an Alliance Peer Worker helped me make positive changes in my own life by giving me HOPE and PURPOSE. Alliance brought me back to who I was and helped me feel in control of my life. I use the tools I’ve gained to create positive change for me and each person I encounter.”
—ANTHONY R., ALLIANCE PEER SUPERHERO
Many thanks to our growing circle of donors, funders, and partners.
Learn more and partner with us at www.alliance.nyc
