Los Angeles Program That Delivers Meals to HIV-Positive People Expands Services Into Several Minority Communities
The Salvation Army and Los Angeles, Calif.-based Project Angel Food have teamed up to provide food to people with HIV/AIDS who reside in "the more distant areas" of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reports. For 12 years, Project Angel Food has prepared meals for delivery to "hundreds" of people with HIV in Los Angeles, but was not always able to reach outlying communities in the city. The group recently opened a satellite kitchen at the Salvation Army's Compton center, where it can deliver meals to homes in Watts, Inglewood and Compton and to AIDS clinics at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center and University of California-Los Angeles Harbor Medical Center. The Times reports that the effort marks the latest attempt to "expand AIDS awareness and programs into South Los Angeles and other minority communities where the disease is spreading rapidly." Many program beneficiaries are referred to the service by their physicians. Dr. Wilbert Jordan, director of the Oasis Clinic at King/Drew, said that in Los Angeles, HIV/AIDS has shifted from "middle-class gay men in West Hollywood" to minorities, women, children and homeless people in the South Los Angeles area, where the disease "still carries a strong stigma." Jordan added that for many HIV-positive homeless people and others without "stabilized living quarters," Project Angel Food provides "their only hot meal" of the day. Project Angel Food will further expand its services next month to provide meal delivery to Long Beach, Carson and other South Bay communities (Rivera, Los Angeles Times, 8/27).
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