About Howard Brown Health Center Founded in 1974, Howard Brown is now one of the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organizations. With an annual budget of over $12.5 million, the agency serves more than 36, 000 adults and youth each year in its diverse health and social service delivery system focused around seven major programmatic divisions: primary medical care, behavioral health, research, HIV/STD prevention, youth services, elder services, and community initiatives. Howard Brown is a multi-site operation based in Chicago and includes a main health and research center in the Uptown neighborhood, Triad Health practice at Illinois Masonic Hospital, the Broadway Youth Center, and three Brown Elephant resale shops in Chicago and Oak Park. In the beginning, there was a coffee pot, a portable kitchen table, a room above an old grocery market, and four medical students who were members of the Chicago Gay Medical Students Association (CGMSA), who had a desire to help Chicago's gay community. The students shared a passion for medicine and research and a philanthropic sense of community and caring. They believed there was a need for a safe and confidential place where gay men and lesbian women could get empathetic psychosocial counseling and sexually transmitted diseases (STD) testing and treatment without political, professional, or personal implications or intrusions. The medical students met in the room above the grocery store across from Chicago's Biograph Theater most every night in 1974. With a small budget, a fully volunteer staff, and a growing need and response from the community, the informal, but well-organized clinic was born. In 1976, the first board formed and named the clinic "Howard Brown Memorial Clinic" after Dr. Howard Brown, an Illinois native, founder of the National Gay Task Force (now the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force), and a former New York City Public Health Commissioner who helped change the image of gay men and lesbians in the United States by coming out publicly in 1973. During the late 70s, Howard Brown providers identified a high rate of hepatitis B among its patients, which led to the agency's participation in several important studies and vaccine trials of the disease. These studies enabled Howard Brown to hire its first paid staff, allowing the agency to move past the all-volunteer stage of operations. This work resulted in a major scientific breakthrough: the development of the hepatitis B vaccine. The development catapulted Howard Brown into the national spotlight and gained the organization prominence and respect in the world of research. When early warning signs of the impending AIDS epidemic became widespread in the early 80s, Howard Brown was quick to react. Keeping informed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, providers at the agency took an active role in helping to coordinate medical investigation and treatment of the first symptoms, which included a fatal form of cancer. By 1985, Howard Brown helped to develop and implement the City of Chicago's AIDS Hotline. The hotline was run mainly through the efforts and contributions of volunteers, twenty-four hours a day. In 1983, more than 1, 100 sexually active gay and bisexual men volunteered to participate in a groundbreaking study: the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) to identify the causes and transmission of AIDS. As the longest running HIV study in the world, the MACS has been funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1983, and Howard Brown has recruited more than 1, 000 participants since that time. The MACS study continues today at Howard Brown, and the 285 current active participants visit Howard Brown twice per year during which time they receive a physical exam, blood draw, and complete an interview with research staff. Many sub-studies have come out of the MA