AHF Hell’s Kitchen responds to demand with new pharmacy

When the number of clients “exploded” over the past year at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Hell’s Kitchen healthcare and wellness center, Marlene LaLota sprung into action. The AHF’s Senior Regional Director knew that the Midtown Manhattan center would be able to better serve its clients with its own pharmacy, rather than the one it had been depending on across town.

So, she scouted for a location and landed one at 402 W. 50th Street, less than a block away from AHF Hell’s Kitchen. Originally designed for a cafe, the two-story-tall store front features an atrium-like retail space with a second level where pharmacists will prepare prescriptions. The site is currently pending its licensure. Once approved, a ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held for the grand opening. LaLota hopes that will be within a few weeks.

O’Donnell & Associates caught up with LaLota, along with Rasheed Gonga, associate director for advocacy, community engagement, and legislative affairs for the AHF’s Northern Bureau, and AHF pharmacy sales rep Jomil Luna for a Q&A and sneak peek of the pharmacy and what to expect when it opens.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Hi Marlene, thank you for having me here before the opening. What has been your role in expanding AHF Hell’s Kitchen with a new pharmacy?

LaLota: I oversee all of our operations in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and that includes growth, which means building new sites like this one.

The Hell’s Kitchen facility is growing from its initial location across the street. What prompted this expansion, and what are you adding?

LaLota: Our site half a block away is a healthcare center and a full-time wellness center. We have several providers that provide medical care, and then we offer free HIV testing and STI screening whenever we’re open.

We were serving that site from our (existing) pharmacy, which is about 20 blocks away. While we were able to keep a supply of medications on site for patients to come in, it wasn’t quite as convenient.

After a year of this explosive growth that we’ve had at our Hell’s Kitchen site, we said, “You know what? We really need a pharmacy closer. We want to make sure that whatever our patients need, there’s no waiting involved.”

In addition, this is a street-level retail pharmacy, so people do not have to be our patients. Anybody can walk in off the street and use our pharmacy to pick up their medications.

We’ll, of course, cross-promote. If they come to get their meds and they don’t have a healthcare provider, we can walk them over. And then clients in our healthcare center — we can walk them over here to show them the pharmacy that we have just built.

What has been driving the growth at the Hell’s Kitchen facility in the past year, and can you quantify that growth?

LaLota: We started with a couple hundred patients. And then we relocated our Columbus Circle site down here … Now we’re at about 1,200 or so.

The growth has been driven by a couple of things: being in the right neighborhood and PrEP. Actually, a huge portion of our growth is due to people going on PrEP because the community is getting the message that it’s very easy now.

You can take a pill, or you can get an injection that lasts for many months, and then you can enjoy your life and not have to be in fear of getting HIV.

So it’s a combination of being in the right place, educating the community, and having them respond to us.

Gonga: I think one of the big things, too, is our partnership with local businesses in the area. We have our community engagement team, our pharmacy sales reps, and our linkage teams that actually go out into the community and spend time working in different venues, hosting events and building partnerships.

Those sorts of partnerships have really led to promoting the services and also creating a sense of community in the space.

Just for context, please talk about why you moved here from Columbus Circle.

Gonga: We had a healthcare center up at Columbus Circle. We moved that healthcare center down here, but we also added our wellness center, which is our sexual health clinic.

I think the sexual health clinic was something that was really needed in this area.

If you look at how the city’s Health Department clinics are placed throughout the city, they’re pretty spread out. The other thing is that the clinic here in Manhattan stops taking patients around 2:00 or 2:30 p.m. So that leaves a big gap in services.

We know gig workers aren’t waking up at 9 a.m. to go get tested. They’re going to wake up around noon and still want to be able to get testing done.

So we decided to open our sexual health clinic starting at 2 p.m. and run into the evening hours, until about 7:30 or 8 p.m.

Why was it important to have a physical presence in this neighborhood?

Gonga: There was a gap between our Midtown location and Columbus Circle. That area is where the LGBTQ community hangs out quite a bit.

We wanted to make sure that we moved into this area and built our presence a little bit more.

We’ve always done outreach here, but we’ve never actually had a physical presence here.

You wanted to be at the heart of that community. How did you pick this space, and what was it before?

LaLota: This corner used to be four separate buildings, and the landlord created one big building. Above us is residential. He originally thought of this as a café, and you can still see some of that vision downstairs.

We happened to see that the space was available and looked at the pictures and said, “Aw…” It was really the location that we liked.

I loved it because it’s different. I thought this community, which appreciates creative, beautiful, and unique spaces, would think this was cool, innovative, and different. That’s how it came about.

Gonga: The other thing, too, is that we didn’t want to be too far from the site. Ideally, we’d have loved for it to be in the same building. But besides that, having to walk down the street is fine.

When do you think you will officially open?

LaLota: We’re in the process of requesting Board of Pharmacy approval. You have to get licensed in New York by the Board of Pharmacy.

We’re in that process now, so it could be anywhere from a few weeks to a month or two. It’s very hard to project. They have to send an inspector, they have to like everything they see, and then we get our license.

Any challenges along the way?

LaLota: Not really. I think it’s been fairly smooth. We already have staff. We’re going to have two pharmacists and two pharmacy technicians to start with.

Describe the services that will be available here.

Gonga: In terms of PrEP, people will be able to access it through insurance or low-cost assistance programs. If they have insurance, we’ll bill insurance and help with co-pay cards if there’s a co-pay. For antiretrovirals, it’s the same thing.

If people don’t have insurance, we’ll help them work through it. If there’s a cost, we’ll help people find resources to cover it.

Will anyone be able to walk in and treat this as a typical pharmacy?

LaLota: Absolutely. We call it a retail street-level pharmacy. Just like Walgreens or CVS, people can send their prescriptions here. Any doctor in the city can send prescriptions to us.

Our pharmacies fill prescriptions for lots of people who are not our patients. They may be patients of other doctors, surgeons, cardiologists, or specialists. People use our pharmacy because of our mission. Ninety-six cents of every dollar goes right back into patient care.

Anybody can tell their doctor, “I want to use the AHF pharmacy. Please send my prescription over.”

Please tell me about the room set aside from your entry way for consultations.

LaLota: When you walk in, you’ll notice a little consultation room. We pride ourselves on people being able to sit down with a pharmacist.

Some people come in with ten bottles of pills and want to know what’s interacting with what, when to take medications, what to take with food, what causes drowsiness, and so on. We offer free consultations with an actual pharmacist.

Will there be any events or specialized services associated with the pharmacy?

Gonga: In this space it’ll be a little difficult to host large events. We’ll probably hold them at the clinic or with one of our partners in the neighborhood. We are planning a ribbon-cutting, opening ceremony, and open-house event.

LaLota: Probably in October.

Are there any other services that the pharmacy provides?

LaLota: As a full-service pharmacy, we offer delivery. We have delivery drivers, some on bicycles. We do bubble packs, vacation packs, home delivery, shipping to alternate locations for privacy concerns, and accommodations for people who travel.

I feel like we accommodate whatever anybody could need to get their medications.

You’re an independent, but independent pharmacies seem to be disappearing. What’s happening?

Gonga: The squeeze that’s happening from pharmaceutical manufacturers and PBMs is killing the mom-and-pop shops. The margins pharmacies used to rely on to keep their doors open are being squeezed away by big corporate interests. You’re seeing more independents go out of business. You’re seeing the big-box chains come in, but they’re strategic about where they place locations.

As a nonprofit, advocacy-focused pharmacy, are you more protected from those pressures?

Gonga: No. We feel the same squeeze. We do a lot of advocacy work and spend a lot of time in Albany pushing legislation.

One of the bills we’re working on is the 340B Anti-Discriminatory Act, which would restrict manufacturers from engaging in contract pharmacy restrictions and prevent discriminatory PBM practices.

These are things we work on to ensure pharmacies like ours, and other independent pharmacies, can continue serving patients.

Jomil, how is the community responding to the pharmacy’s opening?

Luna: Slowly but surely people are finding out. As soon as it opens, it’s going to be a revolving door because we’ve already made a statement in the community with all the events we’ve been having through the wellness center. As soon as the signage goes up and providers start saying, “Go pick it up down the street,” I think it’s going to be fine.

I’ve already had people asking, “Is your pharmacy hiring?” The word is getting out.

Why is the pharmacy such a strong fit for the community you’re serving?

Luna: This area is perfection when it comes to LGBTQ-plus people looking for services. As someone who worked in the Bronx, there’s still a lot of stigma. People sometimes prefer to go outside their borough, hang out somewhere else, get their PrEP, get tested, and do what they need to do. That’s what the community is telling us.

Why did you mention the Bronx specifically?

Luna: Because I worked there. I have an affinity toward the Bronx because it’s very heavily Latino.

As a Latino gay man who’s HIV positive, I realized that even 20 years later, there’s still a lot of stigma. I thought we had done a lot of work in terms of breaking stigma, but it still persists in certain areas. People still worry about who might see them walking into an HIV-related facility. We’ve tried to minimize that by saying, “We’re all inclusive.”

You can come here for primary care. It doesn’t have to just be HIV. It can be PrEP, primary care, STI testing, and more.