GMHC — Gay Men's Health Crisis

GMHC — Gay Men's Health Crisis — at 307 West 38th Street is America's first AIDS service organisation, founded in January 1982 by playwright Larry Kramer, writer Nathan Fain, and a group of writers, artists, and activists who were watching their friends die and receiving no response from government, media, or the mainstream medical establishment. GMHC was created in the apartment of writer Larry Kramer in Greenwich Village with the immediate practical goal of providing information, support, and care to people dying of a disease that had not yet been named. That founding moment — a group of gay men building institutions to care for their own community in the face of official indifference and social stigma — is one of the defining acts of community self-organisation in American history. Today GMHC operates from Hell's Kitchen as a major social service provider: HIV testing and treatment support, mental health services, nutrition programmes, legal services, and advocacy. It serves over 8,000 people annually and operates the largest food pantry for people living with HIV in New York State. The organisation's history is inseparable from the history of the AIDS epidemic in America, and its archives and educational programmes preserve the memory of what the community built and what it survived. For visitors interested in LGBTQ+ history, the GMHC website and public programming provide access to that history.