Equitas Health

Tim Fulton 0:08Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focused on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week, as you may be able to tell, I am slightly under the weather. However, on the occasion of their biannual benefit, Art for Life, coming up on September 24th, and their appearance at the social enterprise event Aspire on September 15th, I sat down for a conversation with the president and CEO of Aequitas Health, Bill Hardy. Formerly known as AIDS Resource Center Ohio, Aequitas Health is a statewide organization that seeks to be the gateway to good health for those at risk of or affected by HIV/AIDS, for the LGBTQ community, and for those seeking a welcoming healthcare home. We talk about the history of the organization, its evolution, what it does, and of course, give a quick rundown of what you can expect at their event, Art for Life. You can get more information on Aequitas Health and other things we discuss in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. A bit of housekeeping for a moment. If you are interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, you can get in touch with us at info@theconfluencecast.com. How was that for a very short plug? Uh, enjoy the interview. I'm sitting down here with Bill Hardy, president and CEO of Aequitas Health, formerly AIDS Resource Center Ohio, also known as ARC Ohio, on the occasion of their upcoming annual benefit, Art for Life.

Bill Hardy 1:56Right.

Tim Fulton 1:56Coming up on September 24th. Bill, how are you?

Bill Hardy 1:59Great. Thanks for having me here. Thank you.

Tim Fulton 2:01Of course. Of course. For those that aren't aware, uh, AIDS Resource Center is now Aequitas Health.

Bill Hardy 2:07That's right.

Tim Fulton 2:07Can you sort of talk about that, that change and sort of why that change was made?

Bill Hardy 2:12Sure. Well, AIDS Resource Center Ohio was providing HIV-specific services for more than 30 years. We've seen great changes in the community, the HIV community. During that time, AIDS really was a, is a medical diagnosis. Thankfully, with all the progress we have made, people are living with HIV disease here in the United States more than they're living with AIDS. So there was, the nomenclature was old, but we also moved forward with expanding our mission to be the gateway to good health for those who are affected by HIV, always a core part of our mission, and to the LGBTQ community, and for others seeking a medical healthcare home. So, uh, expanded mission, old, uh, nomenclature, and to be perfectly honest, 30-some years into it, we still know that the word AIDS and HIV is a stigma. We had our own volunteers and donors who was, said that they would like to use our retail pharmacy open to the public, but they sometimes felt weird walking into the door with AIDS, you know, on the front door, wondering if their friends or colleagues might say, "Gee, is she not well?"

Tim Fulton 3:19Right. And so the organization as a whole has been around for...

Bill Hardy 3:2332, 33 years.

Tim Fulton 3:24And you've been with them since...

Bill Hardy 3:26Uh, 24 years. I'm wrapping up my 24th year.

Tim Fulton 3:29Fantastic. Talk about sort of the change that you've seen, uh, in the time that you've been there.

Bill Hardy 3:36Well, you know, uh, when I started, an AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence. Uh, people diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s and '90s were dead, typically within 18 months of diagnosis. Protease inhibitors and the drug cocktails, as we say, came out in the late 1990s, 1996, 1997, and that literally gave people a new lease on life. Life expectancy today, if we get folks diagnosed soon after infection, get them into care soon after diagnosis, and if they take their meds, they can become virally suppressed, which means the drugs are working, their health, their, their body's immune system is healthy and strong. Life expectancy for those folks is near normal, 70-plus years, and if they're virally suppressed, it is very unlikely, almost impossible, if not improbable, that they will further transmit the virus. So that's just an extraordinary change for those living with HIV.

Tim Fulton 4:34And I wanna sort of talk about the organization and the good work, but let's do a little bit of, you know, sort of public health lecturing here.

Bill Hardy 4:41Sure.

Tim Fulton 4:42Who should be tested? What are reasons to be tested, um, for HIV?

Bill Hardy 4:48Well, the CDC guidelines are that anybody between the ages of, let's say, 10 and 90, uh, who are engaging in any risky behavior should be tested for HIV. So the emphasis today is on routine testing for all adults and youth who are sexually active, who have multiple sex partners, who are engaging in unprotected sex, who are sharing, uh, syringes if they're drug users. They should all be routinely tested. You know, one of the advances we've made is that, you know, 10, 15 years ago, uh, an HIV test was a long and arduous process. It required a blood draw, a waiting period of 10 to 14 days. It was so arduous that half of the people who were tested never came back for their results. Today, we can test you and have a very reasonably accurate, 99.9% accurate result within 20 minutes of the test. So ignorance is not bliss. We want to know whether you're HIV positive or HIV negative. You're, if you're negative, we can help you stay negative through programs like PrEP, which we'll talk about in a moment. If you're HIV positive, we wanna get you in care so we'll keep you healthy.

Tim Fulton 5:57So it's not one of those things where there are symptoms that somebody should be looking for. It, it, it sort of needs to be more proactive than that.

Bill Hardy 6:05Absolutely. You know, one of the downsides of waiting until you're symptomatic, which is what many folks in the old days used to do, is by the time you're symptomatic, your immune system is compromised. If you're s- if you're symptomatic, your immune system is breaking down. You've got an opportunistic infection, and you're already not well. Your health has been compromised.

Tim Fulton 6:24Let's talk about some of the individual programs that you guys offer. First of all, w- what is PrEP?

Bill Hardy 6:30PrEP is pre-exposure prophylaxis. It's a remarkable, uh, almost miraculous step forward in HIV prevention. Until PrEP, uh, abstinence or safer sex practices, including condom use, were the, uh, were what we emphasized. PrEP is a once-a-day pill for HIV-negative individuals that when taken as directed is 92 to 99% effective in keeping HIV-negative folks, even those who are engaging in highest-risk behaviors, from becoming infected and which is just tremendous. You know, I often make the analogy, let's say you're a woman who has a family history of breast cancer. You're at high risk for breast cancer. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and read in the newspaper that s- there's a once-a-day pill, 92 to 99% effective from keeping you g- from getting, uh, breast cancer. You know, it'd be front-page news every day, all day. So it is not a vaccine, right, at this point, although we're still doing research on that. It's a, requires a once-a-day pill, but it's pretty darn good.

Tim Fulton 7:34And this is something that is covered by most health insurance plans.

Bill Hardy 7:37Uh, most health insurance plans here and across the country, all Medicaid plans. Uh, it is not inexpensive. It's about $1,500 per month off the shelf, but again, it's less expensive than treating for HIV infection.

Tim Fulton 7:51Absolutely. Any ... Just for people that are interested in exploring it, any side effects to the medication?

Bill Hardy 7:56Nominal side effects. Um, and one of the, um, things that, uh, one of the protocols for the PrEP program is that we will not write you a script for six or 12 months. We'll write you a script for four months if you fit the risk category. We want to see you every month, so we'll test you for HIV infection. We'll test you for STDs. PrEP does not, uh, prevent transmission of other s- sexually transmitted infections. We'll look at, uh, kidney and liver enzymes, but the, you know, those, those are really in a very small subset. We have assistance programs, by the way, for folks who, um, need, uh, help with out-of-pocket costs and those kinds of things. Already close to 600 folks are getting PrEP through Equitas Health at this point. And again, it's just an incredible leap forward. If we had PrEP, if we had had PrEP in the 1980s and 1990s, millions of people would still be alive with us today and uninfected with HIV. It's that, it's that simple and that effective.

Tim Fulton 8:56What other programs do you want to talk about?

Bill Hardy 8:57Well, we'll serve, um, more than 60,000 Ohioans this year. Um, that includes more than 5,000 who are HIV positive. We have 13 offices, soon to be 14 offices, across Ohio. And for those 5,000 HIV positive folks, we do linkage to housing and other programs like that. We do, uh, enrollment in Ryan White and other federal programs, Medicaid. We have medical case management to help folks m- make sure that folks are getting linked to care. Uh, here in Columbus and in Dayton, we have our own medical clinics which serve, uh, this year more than 3,000 HIV positive and HIV negative folks. That includes, uh, the LGBTQ community and other medically underserved, uh, and of course our pharmacy, which we'll talk about. Um, we do other kinds of programs as well. Prevention programs this year will reach some 50,000 folks with programs like PrEP. One of our newest and most exciting programs is Safe Point. That's a harm reduction program for opioid users and injection heroin users, a huge issue here in Columbus, a huge issue everywhere in Ohio and across this nation. Um, that program we just began in, uh, late January, and we have already more than 700 folks who have used that program.

Tim Fulton 10:20Really?

Bill Hardy 10:21And it's a harm reduction program. So the components are if you're using, if you're an injection drug user, many of those folks share syringes. And what happens when you share syringes is you also share sexually transmissible infections, including hepatitis and HIV. So the program distributes, uh, it, it gives clean syringes to injection users. We also link you with HIV and hepatitis testing. If you're interested in addiction treatment programs, we'll link you with those, uh, and other medical services. An extraordinary response. Again, uh, some 700 folks in, uh, seven months have already availed themselves of that program.

Tim Fulton 11:01But specifically, while linking with other programs, which is fantastic-

Bill Hardy 11:05Right

Tim Fulton 11:05... but specifically what you guys do is distribute the, the needles.

Bill Hardy 11:08Uh, we do. We do counseling. We do on-site testing, STD testing, HIV testing as well. Uh, we're doing that our, at our Short North clinic as well as, uh, in the Franklin neighborhood, Franklinton neighborhood, which we just started a few weeks ago. You know, another part of that program is the naloxone distribution. Naloxone is, uh, a treatment which literally brings people back from the brink of death. Folks have been reading a lot about that in the news. We make-

Tim Fulton 11:36As a result of overdose.

Bill Hardy 11:38That's exactly correct.

Tim Fulton 11:39Right.

Bill Hardy 11:39And we make that available through our pharmacy. You know, if folks have insurance or Medicaid, obviously we'll take that as a form of payment. If they don't have the coverage for those services, uh, in many cases we can help them and provide assistance with, uh, naloxone.

Tim Fulton 11:54Do you view those two programs specifically as something that affects the LGBT community more or is it something where sharing needles as a result of, uh, intravenous drug use and- Overdoses are sort of linked because, you know, if you're using in- intravenous drugs, you may very well overdose. But do those affect the LGBTQ community more?

Bill Hardy 12:18Yeah, we're not seeing that. Maybe counterintuitively, the demographics for heroin users are not what we might anticipate. Here and across Ohio and the nation, heroin users are typically White males, very often, though not exclusively, suburban or rural-living White males, uh, and predominantly heterosexual, uh, White males and females. So heroin, not so much the LGBT community as with other substances, you know, that we saw in years past. You know, when we started the program, the first week nobody showed up. The second week, maybe one or two folks showed up. Uh, there are trust issues. You know, there are issues, questions of whether I'm going to be arrested if I walk in-

Tim Fulton 13:01Right

Bill Hardy 13:02... to your clinic and tell you that I'm using, you know, an illegal substance and sharing syringes or using syringes. And that's because there's still a great deal of stigma, so folks walk out of our clinic and they tell us, "Gosh, you're the folks, first folks," uh, these are white collar, you know, in many cases employed individual, "You're the first ones I've been able to talk with about this." Uh, you know, so addressing the stigma is the first step, which is part of the harm reduction approach. We wanna get you in the door and, uh, you know, if you're not real- ready to come clean 100% on day one, we'll help you take steps to reduce, uh, harm to yourself and to other individuals.

Tim Fulton 13:41Well, and what's interesting to me, since you guys have expanded your mission, is that you've sort of... I imagine that you're, you're almost more willing than a, than a traditional clinic or, or large healthcare provider, willing to sort of insert yourself into the taboo-

Bill Hardy 14:00Right

Tim Fulton 14:00... health category.

Bill Hardy 14:01Right.

Tim Fulton 14:01You're obviously not going to be, you know, providing, uh, healthcare that's not proven.

Bill Hardy 14:06Well, you know, the legacy of organizations like Equitas Health, which was formerly AIDS Resource Center Ohio and Columbus AIDS Taskforce, you know, we were all born out of crisis, and we started around people's kitchen tables and living rooms, you'll recall, in the 1980s, largely because the established healthcare system and the established community and political system, A, didn't know, B, didn't care, C, didn't want to care or respond to the HIV crisis. So our entire legacy has been to be on the fringes and to work outside of the established system. So it is not a stretch for us emotionally or philosophically or mission-wise to reach out to disenfranchised communities. The HIV community, the LGBTQ community, the transgender community, injection drug user, y- these are all disenfranchised, marginalized populations. That's what we have done forever. We do it well. We do it with great passion, and that's what we're about. So we understand stigma, we've lived with stigma, and we can get around stig- stigma. We can, you know, help change cultural norms around that. We can provide services where other people don't want to provide those services. So it, a- again, it's, it's who we are. It's in our, it's in our makeup. It's in our genes.

Tim Fulton 15:28So again, the offering of needles and naloxone, it is sort of the, just a natural fit for you. Even though it's not necessarily the demographic you seek to serve-

Bill Hardy 15:38Correct

Tim Fulton 15:39... it's a natural progression for you.

Bill Hardy 15:41Well, and it's, it's not necessarily part and parcel of the LGBTQ demographic. It's often part of the HIV community. So still somewhere around six, eight, 10% of HIV-positive Americans were infected through syringe exchange, so there is that link to us. And you'll recall a year or so ago in Indiana, I think it was Knox County, the outbreak there in a very small county. Hundreds of folks infected with HIV, um, through syringe exchange. That was the, the fulcrum, if you will, that moved the ball on our own federal Congress which for years have said, "We will..." This is a predominantly conservative Congress who said you cannot use any federal funds for any type of syringe exchange programs. After Indiana, finally they have, uh, moved a little bit. We still cannot use a single federal penny to purchase syringes, but we can now use federal funds for syringe-related services, for medical care, for outreach, for treatment, and those kinds of things. So it took that terrible catastrophe in the state next to us to finally move the thinking of our political leaders. And again, we're making decisions based on science here, not politics. The science is clear. Syringe exchange programs work. And again, a syringe costs less than a bu- a dollar. Uh, you know, a new HIV infection, uh, is $350,000 lifetime expected cost, so it's, it's a great ROI.

Tim Fulton 17:10AIDS Resource Center Ohio came into existence in 2011, I think, as a result of the merging of a couple of different Ohio organizations.

Bill Hardy 17:18Yeah, actually AIDS Resource Center Ohio preexisted. That was the name of the western half of the state, so-

Tim Fulton 17:23Okay

Bill Hardy 17:24... uh, Dayton, Lima, Toledo, Mansfield was AIDS Resource Center Ohio, which merged with Columbus AIDS Taskforce in July 1, 2011. We kept the old name at that point, and then, uh, just this April announced our new name and expanded mission.

Tim Fulton 17:39There was a large expansion of the organization when you guys decided to open the pharmacies.

Bill Hardy 17:46Right.

Tim Fulton 17:46What is the operating budget currently?

Bill Hardy 17:48So the fiscal year 2017, uh, operating budget is $57 million. Now, 70-plus percent of that is pharmacy. So in 2011, we announced our merger, Columbus AIDS Task Force, AIDS Resource Center Ohio. A couple months later, we picked up the Ohio AIDS Coalition, and at that point, we're a combined staff of, oh, 75 or 80 and a 6.5 or so million dollar budget. We were not doing any medical or pharmacy care at that point. One of the drivers for me as the CEO to move forward with the merger at that point was because I believed that medical care was an essential part of who we needed to be moving forward. Then the feds have been-

Tim Fulton 18:30And so what, what were you doing before?

Bill Hardy 18:32We were doing-

Tim Fulton 18:33Was it much more just advocacy and sort of pointing people in the right direction for care?

Bill Hardy 18:37Um, it was a typical social services and prevention organization, so HIV case management, HIV prevention and testing and counseling, uh, public, some public policy work, those kinds of things, but not, no medical care at all. And, you know, with the president's National HIV/AIDS Strategy and with the Affordable Care Act coming down, uh, the pike, you know, the, to me, the writing on the wall was fairly clear. And the feds were saying as much as, "If you're an AIDS service organization and you have any, uh, viable future ahead of you, it will be because you're connected to or actually providing medical services." So the merger was July 1, 2011. In February of 2012, I presented to our merged board the fact that we needed to be doing medical care. Uh, six months later, almost to the date, we had the ribbon cutting on our first medical center at, uh, uh, our North High, Short North location. Uh, and that was just the catapult. That was the shot out of the cannon. We met our first year's goals for patient enrollment. We went from zero patients to our first-year goal, and some would ... Hit, hit that goal somewhere between month four and five. Um, and as part of that model, which is a patient-centered medical home model, so it's HIV care plus primary care plus mental health plus housing and social services, uh, case management and so forth, um, we have an on-site pharmacy, and the pharmacy was necessary for two reasons. In this country, as I said, if we get people virally suppressed, life expectancy is near normal, and it's l- very unlikely that they'll transmit the virus. Having said that, only 30% or so of HIV-positive Americans are virally suppressed, and that's because only 40% or so are on medications, which is crazy.

Tim Fulton 20:31Mm-hmm.

Bill Hardy 20:31You know, we have these meds now. So we put the ph- the pharmacy front and center. If you come into our Short North location, you see the receptionist desk and the pharmacy at the same time. As a result of that, 91 or more percent of our patients are on meds, and as a result of that, our viral suppression rate is 80-plus percent. The national average is 30-some percent. So ex-

Tim Fulton 20:54And I'm sorry, you're talking about just your patients, or are you talking about the community?

Bill Hardy 20:58That's our patients who are HIV positive.

Tim Fulton 21:01Okay.

Bill Hardy 21:01So pharmacy on site s- it's, Tim, if you are a patient of ours, we are going to dog you so you'll take your meds so you can keep healthy. The other part of it is as, as, as a social enterprise. Because we're funded to provide medical care to this population, we can purchase the medications that we sell through our pharmacy at a lower cost. The result of that is we'll bill your insurance, Medicaid, Medicare at the prevailing rates, um, but our profit margin is higher than, you know, if you go to a retail pharmacy. And as a result of that, we're making a profit on our pharmacy, and every penny of that pharmacy is wrapped into medical care, prevention, testing, syringe exchange. But everything else we do, we're losing money on more or less. The pharmacy really is the social enterprise engine for us.

Tim Fulton 21:50The switch that you guys made four months ago from AIDS Resource Center Ohio to Aequitas Health and your goal being to primarily serve, be a healthcare home for the LGBT community, why is that needed?

Bill Hardy 22:03Well, for a number of reasons. First of all, despite all the progress we've made, two-thirds of folks living with HIV or newly infected with HIV are still members of the LGBTQ community, especially gay males, especially young gay males, and most especially young gay males of color, um, which coincidentally or not, are often the populations least likely to seek primary healthcare. You know, so every 20-year-old on the planet says, "I don't need healthcare until I break my leg," or something. So we expanded our mission to, and changed our name, again, to get people in the door. There are lots of people who are g- you know, "I'm 20 years old. I'm just coming out. I don't have AIDS. Why would I walk into your door to get services?" So we took AIDS off the front door. Aequitas, by the way, is from the Latin word meaning acceptance, dignity, and respect, and equality, which are core values of ours. And concurrently with that, you know, we've seen remarkable social changes in this country around the LGBTQ community. Same-sex marriage now legal everywhere in the country, and, you know, that's a remarkable stride forward. And as the population has been emerging and coming forward as individuals and LGBT same-sex families, we've also begun as a healthcare industry to look at their healthcare needs and are learning that those healthcare needs are largely unmet. Still stigma, so we have patients of ours, um, who, uh A, a gay male, for example, on our staff who came forward to his provider some time ago and disclosed that he was, uh, a gay male, and his healthcare provider, without asking, wrote down that he was living with AIDS. He's not living with AIDS. He's not living... you know, he's not HIV positive. Um, or, um, you know, a female who's a patient of ours who came out to her healthcare provider up in Toledo, self-disclosed as a lesbian, and the provider walked out of the room. Never came back, you know? Or sh- you know, or other patients who are shamed by their pr- "Well, your problem is you're gay, you need s- or lesbian. You need to stop living that lifestyle." So all kinds of disparities of rejection, of shaming, of providers who simply are not competent to care for the specific needs of the LGBT community. By the way, as an example of that, I mentioned that we have approaching 600 patients on PrEP. Lots and lots of those patients are patients who initially went to their own primary healthcare provider and said, "I wanna be on PrEP. I'm sexually active." Uh, and their provider said, "Then stop being prev- p- sexually active. Live a, an appropriate lifestyle," or simply refused to put them on PrEP. The parallel for women is turning back the clock a few decades and for their healthcare provider to s- when she asked for birth control pill for her provider to simply said, "Then stop having sex outside of marriage." This is not acceptable healthcare.

Tim Fulton 25:06What would you say to those that, that the services that you're offering are encouraging risky behavior?

Bill Hardy 25:11Sure. We hear that all the time, you know, not unlike women in the '60s again who went for birth control, you know, uh, all of a sudden they were gonna start having sex when they... y- it's just not true. The facts, the science don't bear them out. You know, if, if condom use and abstinence were widely acceptable practices, young gay men would still not be the most infected. If, if abstinence and condom use and all those other safer pract- safer sex practices were commonly adopted, we would still not be having 1,000 new HIV infections diagnosed in Ohio every year. The facts just don't bear that... you know, it's the same thing as comprehensive sex ed, you know, for the folks who say, "If you teach my seventh grader or my 12th grader about comprehensive sex ed, they're gonna all of a sudden start having sex." Folks, that's not how it works.

Tim Fulton 26:05In the end, sort of if you could forecast out, now that you've made this change to Equitas Health-

Bill Hardy 26:10Mm-hmm

Tim Fulton 26:10... what, what do you hope to accomplish?

Bill Hardy 26:13Well, first of all, you know, we want to continue, we will continue to provide quality, um, primary care services to the HIV-positive and, uh, affected HIV community. 20,000-plus HIV-positive Ohioans, we're serving 5,000 of them. Many, uh, still- many are getting their services elsewhere. Many are not getting services. So we'll continue to do more outreach and more care for them than we have ever done before, and effective programs like PrEP, which again, is just a breakthrough, only three years old. In terms of the LGBTQ community, the estimates are that there are about 395,000 Ohioans who are members of the LGBTQ community, and, i- included in that number, 39,000 trans individuals, which is remarkable. You know, I hear those numbers, and I'm, I'm pretty impressed and overwhelmed. So many of them are not getting primary care. We want to be a primary care provider for them. That'll make their lives healthier, make the entire community, uh, aggregated, uh, healthier.

Tim Fulton 27:16Well, and to be clear, it's not even necessarily that they're not getting primary care. It's that they're not getting primary care that is addressing-

Bill Hardy 27:23That's correct

Tim Fulton 27:24... this, this, a part of their life.

Bill Hardy 27:26That's right, and it's not providing comprehensive best care available to them. One of the ways we'll do that is, you know, along with our merger and rebrand, we announced the, uh, Equitas Health Institute for LGBTQ Health Equity. So it's a new division of ours which will work across the state to do, uh, education about LGBTQ health and community and their health needs. It will do training. We have a conference this fall for 500 folks, uh, which is in, uh, September, uh, for 500 folks October 20 and 21 here. It's in central Ohio, but it's really a Midwest conference for LGBTQ health equity. We have presenters coming from across the country, literally from San Francisco to Boston, to talk about LGBTQ health equity more than-

Tim Fulton 28:14And these are for, uh, these are for medical professionals, these-

Bill Hardy 28:17Medical professionals, other providers, and members of the community, and again, capacity of 500. It will be at the OSU Fawcett Center, and their capacity is 500 individuals. We already have folks registered for that from five or six states, so we're really thrilled about this, the largest conference of its type between Chicago and the East Coast. Uh, and speaking of that, you know, I think our vision is that with our expanded mission and our rebrand and the needs that are presented here in Columbus, which has a substantial LGBTQ community, and across Ohio, you know, I think our vision and our likelihood is that we'll be the largest center of our type between, uh, Chicago and the East Coast in terms of providing care for HIV, for the LGBT community, and other medically underserved individuals as a community health center.

Tim Fulton 29:07And this, uh, change was sort of modeled after a couple of other organizations.

Bill Hardy 29:13Yeah, we looked at organizations and best practices across the country. We started with our colleagues in Wisconsin, which is an HIV-specific organization, AIDS Resource Center Wisconsin, and from there, you know, after we, uh, got our feet on the ground and expanded into healthcare, we started looking at, uh, Fenway Health, which is in Boston. Fenway is the largest provider of LGBTQ health In the country. We looked at Whitman-Walker, which went through an incredible metamorphosis about 10 years ago. Whitman-Walker is in Washington. Uh, went through terrible times of downsizing and, uh, financial woes, reinvented themselves. They're now doing exactly what we're doing, which is a primary healthcare provider to the LGBT community, to the HIV community, and to other medically underserved individuals. So there's no need for us to reinvent the wheel as we've looked at best practices across the country.

Tim Fulton 30:10Besides the event, which we're about to get into and talk about, uh, Art for Life on September 24th, are there other ways that the community can help?

Bill Hardy 30:19Uh, the answer is always yes. You know, uh, I mentioned that we have a $57 million budget. Much of that is, uh, comes from our pharmacy and medical services. We're still a nonprofit, uh, community organization, you know, and as I always say, that means we rely on the charity and the goodwill and support from, uh, folks in the community. So Art for Life is coming up. That's one of our banner high-level, uh, fundraisers here. We have AIDS Walk Ohio. We have, uh, small events all the time going on. We do annual appeals. We do volunteer- we use volunteers in all kinds of capacities, and folks can get lots of information about all those things on our website, which is equitashealth.com.

Tim Fulton 31:05Let's say that someone doesn't feel that they have the capacity to give, the pharmacy is open to the public.

Bill Hardy 31:10Yeah, the pharmacy is a retail, full-service pharmacy just like any of your big box pharmacies, only better. You know, our pharmacy is a very high-touch pharmacy, so we intentionally keep the ratio of pharmacy staff to customers or patients very low. Uh, we'll call you and check up on you to see how you're, uh, if you're having any side effects or any questions if you're a patient of ours on site. That means your medical providers, your nurses, your doctors, your mental health therapists are only steps away from the pharmacist. Uh, we will do mail order across the state, so you don't even need to be present to pick up your meds. And again, every penny that we make through the pharmacy, unlike pharmacies that are held by stockholders, every penny is reinvested into services right here in Ohio, Columbus, and across the state.

Tim Fulton 32:01Fantastic. So, uh, coming up, September 24th-

Bill Hardy 32:05Right

Tim Fulton 32:06... Art for Life.

Bill Hardy 32:06That's right.

Tim Fulton 32:07Primarily an art auction.

Bill Hardy 32:09Right.

Tim Fulton 32:09Um, ticketed event. How much are tickets?

Bill Hardy 32:11Tickets for general, uh, admission and the silent auction are $150. The live auction is actually sold out. We had 400 tickets, and they sell out every year. Um, as you said, it's the 24th of September at the Columbus Museum of Art in their new wing, the, uh, Margaret and Walter Wing, which of course is an exciting addition to the museum and to the community. And we're doing it this year in collaboration with the Pizzuti Collection, uh, a great museum here in town, a nonprofit organization who has partnered with us. And this year, for the first time, we're bringing artists to the table, or at least their artworks to the table, from outside Columbus, literally from across the nation. 85 artists, most or all of whom have Columbus connections, so they grew up here, they went to school here, they're now in New York or elsewhere. Really exciting artworks.

Tim Fulton 33:05What does that event tend to reap for you?

Bill Hardy 33:08Um, the last time was the first time, happily, a- and it's a biannual event, so in 2014, first time we exceeded $500,000 from the event. That comes from ticket sales, art purchases, corporate sponsorships. Uh, really is a very hot ticket, a great, great, great event.

Tim Fulton 33:28Great. Bill, again, thank you for your time.

Bill Hardy 33:30My pleasure. Thank you.

Tim Fulton 33:38Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on Equitas Health, Art for Life, and the other things we discuss in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, your family, contacts, your enemies, your local healthcare provider. We can be reached by email at theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. I am your host, Tim Fulton. Have a good week.