Damien Center opens Mosaic headquarters, expanding health care and supportive services

The Damien Center is moving next door to its old location. On Wednesday, it opened the Mosaic building on Indianapolis’s Near East Side. The new facility spans nearly a whole city block and expands services for the LGBTQ community and people living with HIV and AIDS in Central Indiana.

The Damien Center has been working to end the epidemic in Indianapolis since it was founded in 1987 amid the disease’s wider outbreak.

“Last year, our staff across all of our programs served more than 11,000 unique people. It’s crazy that we had that many people come in and out of that small building. So in this building, we will be able to serve, we think, 25,000 unique people,” said Alan Witchey, the organization’s president and CEO, at a press conference. “That is extraordinary.”

There have been major advances in health care and prevention in recent decades.

But the epidemic isn’t over.

In 2022, more than 500 people in Indiana were diagnosed with HIV and 100 people with AIDS, according to the state health department. Over 7,000 people total had HIV and over 6,000 had AIDS that same year.
 

The new building will expand the suite of supportive services the Damien Center offers. The organization provides medical care, HIV and STI testing, mental health counseling, and food and housing assistance.

The new building was designed to emphasize inclusivity and welcome everyone. It more than doubles their medical exam rooms to 18 total. They’re also adding a dental clinic and an intensive outpatient therapy program — firsts for the organization.

Witchey said the Damien Center is committed to reach out to 2,000 people living with HIV who don’t have access to medical care. Many of these are people of color, whom the epidemic disproportionately impacts.

“We will be working actively to develop strategies to reach out to those groups, to work with other community partners … such as shelters, street outreach teams,” he said. “We just created a new position that will work directly with the health department to help identify some of those people.”

The initiative is planned to launch this summer.
 

It opens during a challenging time for nonprofits and the LGBTQ community. President Donald Trump’s administration has recently proposed funding cuts for HIV research, prevention and intervention services, ended multiple HIV vaccine trials, as well as eliminated grants that support the LGBTQ community.

The Damien Center has also felt some of these cuts. But it’s still pushing ahead.

“We are not backing down. We are going forward. We are expanding the work we’re doing. We are here for the community to support and prop up, to end HIV, and to eliminate health disparities for LGBTQ+ communities,” Witchey said.

The Damien Center started seeing clients in the Mosaic building Thursday.

Contact WFYI data journalist Zak Cassel at zcassel@wfyi.org.