2023 Health Care Champions Health Care Organization – Small: AIDS Project of the Ozarks

AIDS Project of the Ozarks fills a niche in the Springfield community.

“Because we began as strictly an AIDS service organization, many of the folks we served experienced significant stigma, shame and discrimination,” says Executive Director Lynne Meyerkord. “APO provides a nonjudgmental, scientific, fact-based place to get health care and information.”

Where stigma exists, many people delay testing and treatment, Meyerkord says, leading to harmful health outcomes. Additionally, marginalized people are sometimes reluctant to go to more traditional health care providers for fear of being harassed or chastised for their lifestyles.

“APO values meeting people where they are and encourages healthy lifestyle choices, while not shaming, scolding or suggesting they are less-than,” Meyerkord says.

As one example, earlier this year, APO received grant funds from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services to purchase and place 27 vending machines stocked with naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, around Springfield to provide lifesaving drug overdose reversal medication.

“Dead people can’t get clean and sober,” Meyerkord says, adding APO offers harm reduction supplies, including condoms, free of charge to remove barriers to preventing illness and death.

The organization was founded in 1983 by a small group of friends and family of those returning to Springfield to die from complications of AIDS. Springfield residents began contracting human immunodeficiency virus, and the need for services mushroomed. APO incorporated in 1985 and began receiving federal grants to provide an array of care in 1991.

APO now provides primary medical and specialty HIV medical care, as well as sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment and pre-exposure prophylactic medical care for the prevention of HIV.

Additionally, APO provides psychiatric and behavioral health outpatient care, well-women care, medical case management and medical transportation, Meyerkord says.

“Over time, with the history of providing effective care to marginalized groups, APO expanded to offer primary care and other services to folks that do not have HIV,” Meyerkord says. “We continue operating because all of the aforementioned services are still needed in the community, and we are the logical agency to provide them.”

Meyerkord said the organization has evolved as the health care system has changed.

“Through measured, thoughtful expansion, we have grown from 480 clinic patients in 2017 to over 1,500 in 2023,” Meyerkord says.

In 2022, the agency earned the distinction of being named a federally qualified health center look-alike, a rare designation conferred by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

APO works with numerous community partners, including hospitals, health agencies and social service agencies. It also sponsors health fairs and gatherings for minority residents, homeless people and other marginalized people.

“Health care outcomes can be improved when many health care providers are working toward the common goal,” Meyerkord says.