KING COUNTY, WASHINGTON - Public Health's Spring Street Clinic (formerly the AIDS Prevention Project clinic) is slated for closure in May 2000. Service levels will remain the same, but will be delivered at other Public Health and field sites.

Since 1986, Public Health staff have provided confidential and anonymous HIV counseling and testing (C/T) services to over 25,000 individuals at this facility, including 2,469 people who tested HIV positive. In addition, the clinic's One-on-One program has provided anonymous and confidential assessment and referral for persons newly diagnosed with HIV infection.

Clinic staff and anonymous/confidential services will not be reduced. Staff will continue to provide HIV C/T at various field sites within King County, including other Public Health clinics and venues frequented by persons at high risk for HIV. The clinic's One-on-One program will also operate at other Public Health clinics. Details of service delivery locations are still being negotiated.

"Public Health is committed to providing anonymous and confidential HIV services to those who need and want them in King County", said Dr. Alonzo Plough, Director of Public Health - Seattle & King County. "We are currently assessing and prioritizing venue options in order to assure appropriate and convenient access to these services for those at highest risk for HIV infection and its complications".

Those needing HIV testing or other services may call Public Health's HIV/STD Hotline at: (206) 205- STDS (7837).

The closure of this clinic has been considered repeatedly over the past several years as the local demand for HIV C/T has decreased and funding for this program has diminished. The transfer of Public Health's HIV/AIDS services to other sites will enable more efficient and better targeted delivery by reducing high overhead costs, better enabling Public Health to take services directly to clients, and bringing expert models of HIV counseling and care to other clinical sites. This facility closure is not due to passage of Initiative 695 and Public Health's subsequent loss of Motor Vehicle Excise Tax revenue.

Locally, HIV has primarily affected men who have sex with men and injection drug users. During the past four years, new and highly effective anti-retroviral drug cocktails have slowed the progress of HIV disease among the infected and dramatically diminished AIDS diagnoses and deaths. Nonetheless, new HIV infections are believed to be occurring locally at the same or greater rates as in the recent past. This is evidenced by dramatic increases of sexually transmitted disease rates among men who have sex with men. In addition, numbers of person living with HIV and AIDS have been rising at about 5% per year recently.

Public Health - Seattle & King County first established a specific AIDS assessment clinic in 1983, initially in the downtown Public Safety Building, before HIV was known to be the cause of AIDS. The clinic moved to the Harborview STD Clinic in 1985, and then to the corner of Summit and Seneca on First Hill in 1986 where it was known as the AIDS Prevention Project. At this site, services were greatly expanded as part of the "Be-A-Star" research project funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

In 1992, the clinic moved to the corner of Blanchard and Fourth in downtown Seattle, sharing a facility with the Downtown Public Health Center. In 1998, the clinic moved to its current and final site on Spring Street on Capitol Hill.