Los Angeles Blade: APLA opens eighth location in LA County
The Michael Gottlieb Health Center is latest APLA facility to open, making it the eighth location in L.A. County to offer accessible healthcare services.
APLA Health recently opened its brand new the Michael Gottlieb Health Center in West Hollywood with a glitzy ribbon-cutting featuring a bevy of local politicians and community leaders on Friday, June 13. The new location, APLA’ eighth facility, will help the organization provide dedicated LGBTQ-inclusive health services to its more than 22,000 patients.
The new health center boasts 10 exam rooms offering primary, HIV and sexual health care, as well as mental health services. It also includes APLA’s first pharmacy and headquarters for the Alliance for Housing and Healing.
The WeHo location is named after Dr. Michael Gottlieb, the groundbreaking physician and researcher who in 1981 co-authored the first medical report identifying the illness that would later become known as AIDS. He later spearheaded important research on the progression and treatment of HIV/AIDS and co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research. He spent the last four years of his career at APLA, retiring in 2023.
“I’m honored to help dedicate this health center with my name on it,” Gottlieb told a packed audience in the new center’s waiting room. “The center is named for someone who is not of the community, but I’m proud to have my name up there, and grateful for a community that has confided in me and trusted in me for decades now, and I continue to stand with you in these difficult times in all the issues you’re facing.”
All of the speakers at the opening ceremony noted the difficult political climate for queer people, immigrants, and health care under the new Trump administration in Washington.
APLA has already been forced to lay off its PrEP Navigation Team from its Baldwin Hills location, as the federal government has terminated all contracts on HIV and STD prevention with providers in LA County.
West Hollywood Mayor Chelsea Byers says this moment is an opportunity for the community to come together to build a strong response.
“We have this opportunity to understand what we are able to do as a local community against the backdrop of an administration like you had in the 80s,” said Byers. “I wasn’t totally there that whole time. But this link between past experience and present moment is really critical. It’s heartening to see so many community leaders. It’s a really amazing moment we have as a community. At a time when care is needed to be extended to more than ever before I’m grateful to APLA for making such a beautiful space where care can shine so
bright in our city.”
U.S. Rep. Laura Friedman (CA-30) agreed with that sentiment. “We have seen this administration deliberately demonize members of our community.
They have demonized immigrants, minorities, our trans community members. They’ve turned their back on the LGBT community, cruelly cutting funding for AIDS prevention and STDs. And yet, coming into West Hollywood and this community, and into this room, we see there’s a tremendous amount of caring and love,” said Friedman. “That is how we change things in this country, by living those values every day.”
“At a time when the federal government is no longer a partner in anything medical, this facility is going to provide an incredible and needed safety net for patients,” she said. Despite these threats, APLA Health CEO Craig Thompson says the organization is committed to serving everyone who needs care.
“The need for people for health care is going to continue regardless of what the federal government does around funding, and we’re committed to being there to provide that health care in all the different ways we possibly can,” he says. One of the new ways APLA’s new facility will improve service to its patients is through its new in-house pharmacy.
In addition to fostering closer connection between a patient’s doctor and pharmacist, APLA will offer free delivery at no charge to patients and will help consolidate prescriptions to make it easier for patients to receive and take their medicine.
“We’ve been wanting to close the loop on comprehensive care and offer a pharmacy for our patients, that way they can get all the support withing one organization,” says Rich Kowalski, APLA director of pharmacy.