Local
National LGBT youth advocacy group to close doors
NYAC officials say money woes led to shutdown decision
The National Youth Advocacy Coalition (NYAC), a Washington, D.C.-based national organization that advocated on behalf of LGBT youth for more than 18 years, announced on Monday that it would close its doors for good on May 13.
“The organization has been experiencing financial hardship for years,” the group said in an announcement on its Facebook page. “This is a very difficult decision and was not made lightly.”
The group’s interim executive director, Asha Leong, told the Blade the NYAC board struggled over the past six months to obtain new sources of revenue from foundations and other donors at a time when its declining donor base was made worse by the national recession.
Leong said that in recent years, at least 80 percent of NYAC’s annual budget of between $400,000 and $500,000 came from a single federal grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She said the CDC lowered the grant from $427,500 last year to $406,125 for NYAC’s current fiscal year. The grant was for HIV testing and prevention programs targeting black and Latino gay male, bisexual, and transgender youth.
She said a mostly new board of directors led by board president Amita Swadhin of New York scrambled over the past six months to reverse the organization’s narrowing donor base and dependence on a single federal funding source for most of its budget.
“We have for many years largely been an HIV/AIDS organization,” said Leong, who joined NYAC as interim director in January. “This government contract has been the bulk of our work, which has been another struggle because I think that our past vision was not only a health involvement organization but also to be an LGBT youth empowerment development organization.”
The NYAC website shows that the group currently has four employees, including Leong, along with interns and volunteers. Its offices are located at 1638 R St., N.W., near Dupont Circle.
LGBT leaders familiar with NYAC this week praised its work on LGBT youth, saying the group became a pioneer in recognizing during its early years the need for addressing youth-related issues.
“Like others, I was sad to hear that NYAC will be closing its doors,” said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. Carey served as NYAC’s first full-time executive director in the late 1990s.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Carey said “the staff, board, youth and adults associated with NYAC over the years have changed the lives of thousands and thousands of LGBTQ youth in ways that are profound, inspirational and will carry on long into the future.”
Andrew Barnett, executive director of D.C.’s Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League (SMYAL), which was among the local organizations to receive support from NYAC, praised NYAC for its work.
“For the past 18 years, NYAC has been a key national leader by empowering LGBTQ youth to be a part of the movement for social justice for all,” Barnett said. “NYAC’s youth organizing programs have raised the voices of LGBTQ youth from all over the country.”
Adam Tenner, executive director of the D.C.-based Metro Teen AIDS and one of NYAC’s founding board members, said the group’s demise may be part of a pattern he sees both in LGBT and non-LGBT non-profit organizations.
“When the bulk of a group’s funding comes from one source, it can create an unevenness that’s hard to correct,” said Tenner, who long ago left the NYAC board. “As to what finally did in the agency, the imbalance of the funding mix and the lack of a clear, actionable vision in the organization over the past five or six years” played a significant role, he said.
“And unfortunately, this amazing group of people who currently serve on the board I think got there too late to really save it,” he said.
Rehoboth Beach
Women’s FEST returns to Rehoboth Beach next week
Golf tournament, mini-concerts, meetups planned for silver anniversary festival
Women’s+ FEST 2026 will begin on Thursday, April 9 at CAMP Rehoboth Community Center.
The festival will celebrate a remarkable milestone in 2026: its silver anniversary. For 25 years, Women’s+ FEST has brought fun and entertainment for all those on the spectrum of the feminine spirit. There will be a variety of events including a golf tournament, mini-concerts and happy hour meetups.
For more information, visit Camp Rehoboth’s website.
District of Columbia
How new barriers to health care coverage are hitting D.C.
Federally qualified health centers bracing for influx of newly uninsured patients
Washington, D.C. has the second-lowest rate of people who lack health insurance in the country, but many residents are facing new barriers to health care due to provisions of the sweeping federal law passed in July, which threatens access for thousands.
Changes to insurance eligibility and the rising cost of premiums, which kicked in for some in October and others more recently, are expected to leave many more patients uninsured or unable to afford medical care. Federally qualified health centers, including D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Health, where 10 to 12 percent of patients are uninsured, are bracing for an influx of newly uninsured patients while facing their own financial challenges.
Even in D.C., where uninsured rates have been among the lowest in the country, changes brought on by the passage of the Republican mega bill (known as the “Big Beautiful Bill”) will have major effects.
The changes from the bill affect Medicaid, which is free to low-income patients, and subsidies for insurance that people buy on the health insurance exchanges that were started under the Affordable Care Act, which were allowed to expire on Dec. 31.
Erin Loubier, vice president for access and strategic initiatives at Whitman-Walker Health, says some Whitman-Walker Health patients have received notices about premium increases, including several who say the increases are up to 1,000 percent more than they were paying.
“That is like paying rent,” she says. “We live in an expensive city, so any increases are going to be really, really hard on people.”
Whitman-Walker Health and other healthcare providers are expecting the changes to have multiple effects — some patients may not be able to afford coverage or may avoid going to the doctor and allow health conditions to worsen because they can’t afford care, and many more will be seeking care who don’t have insurance.
“I’m worried that we’re going to not just have people who can’t get care, but that they delay care until they’re really sick, and then the care is not as effective because they might have waited too long, and then we may have a less healthy population,” Loubier says.
Loubier says delaying care, and serving more people without insurance has major implications for Whitman-Walker Health and other health centers serving the community.
“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on us to try to find and raise more money, and that’s going to be harder, because I think all organizations who provide health care are going to be facing this,” she says.
The U.S. health care system is the most expensive in the world, and has much higher out-of-pocket costs for individuals. But in other countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and many others, health care is much less expensive — or even free.
Even though the U.S. has a high-priced healthcare system, critics say there are still ways to bring down costs by forcing insurance and pharmaceutical companies to absorb more of the costs, rather than transferring the costs to patients.
“In the U.S., they end up trying to cut costs at the person’s level, not at the level of the different corporations or structures that are making a lot of money in healthcare,” said Loubier. “Our system is so complicated and there is probably waste in it, but I don’t think that that cost and waste is at the ‘people’ level. I think it’s higher up at the system level, but that is much, much harder to get people to try to make cuts at that end.”
Ultimately at Whitman-Walker Health, healthcare providers and insurance navigators are planning to help with everyday necessities when it comes to healthcare coverage and striving to provide healthcare in partnership with patients, said Loubier.
“The key here is we’re going to have a lot of people who may lose insurance, and they’re going to rely on places like Whitman-Walker Health and other community health centers, so we have to figure out how we keep providing that care,” she said.
(This article was written by a student in the journalism program at Bard High School Early College DC. This work is part of a partnership between the Washington Blade Foundation and Youthcast Media Group, funded through the FY26 Community Development Grant from the Office of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.)
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
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