Alliance 2023 Impact Update

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 Photo: Alliance/David Nager

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

Board Chair

SHAREN I. DUKE

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:

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:

+ 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.

Outreach, Linkage to Care, and Food and Nutrition Services

Care Coordination and Treatment Adherence Services

+ 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.

Harm Reduction and Recovery Support, including MedicationAssisted Treatment

Peer Worker Trainings, Economic Mobility Opportunities, and Evidence-based Health Promotion Groups

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

Photo: Alliance/David Nager

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 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.

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.

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.

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 2,748 overdose

reversal trainings and Narcan kits distributed.

152 lifesaving overdose reversals

using Alliance’s harm reduction kits, as reported by community members.

Photo: Ashley Salgado

syringes distributed— a 42% increase over 2022.

US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand with NYS Assemblymember Alex Bores and Alliance staff at a 2023 press conference on the fentanyl crisis.

More Impact Highlights

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.”

+ 4,361 New Yorkers

received personalized care coordination to manage HIV and other chronic health conditions by accessing quality medical care, substance use treatment, mental health services, housing, entitlements advocacy, and more.

+ 1,090+ people living with HIV improved their health through Alliance’s pharmacy-access services and HIV treatment adherence education/ support; 95% achieved an undetectable viral load.

+ 350+ New Yorkers

participated in Alliance’s economic mobility training and job placement programming, culminating in paid Peer Worker positions. Our Peer superheroes help us lead the charge on harm reduction, health promotion, health care navigation, and other services.

+ 4,756 people got health

insurance and medical care through our Linkage to Care programs.

—ANTHONY R., ALLIANCE PEER SUPERHERO

Photo: Alliance/David Nager

+ 945 HIV tests (yielding a

2.1% seropositivity rate) and 331 hepatitis C tests (1.5% seropositivity rate) empowered New Yorkers to know their status.

Every person who tested positive was promptly linked to care. Every person who tested negative received resources and support to stay negative.

+ 30,000+ meals, food pantry

bags, and hygiene kits— along with warm clothing— helped our participants meet their basic needs as a foundation to pursuing their positive change goals.

Join Alliance in bringing even more positive change in 2024 by becoming a supporter today!

Many thanks to our growing circle of donors, funders, and partners.

Learn more and partner with us at www.alliance.nyc

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Allen Zwickler, Chair Anita Venkiteswaran, Vice Chair Robert Shepardson, Treasurer Maabo Kludze, Secretary David Berger Benjamin Eckhardt Stephen Gass

Jennifer Gordon Nick Holmes Andres Nieto Laillah Rice William Toler Sharen I. Duke, Executive Director/CEO

64 W 35th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10001 (212) 645-0875 | questions@alliance.nyc | www.alliance.nyc/donate

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