A small group of volunteers led by Kerry Stoner founded the Pittsburgh AIDS Task Force in 1985 to address a lack of support services for people living with AIDS and to provide better information about the disease. A combination of misinformation and an absent coordinated national response made services especially stigmatized and difficult to access. In its infancy, PATF provided support to people dying from AIDS-related illnesses by coordinating a peer-to-peer support program called the Buddy Program. PATF also focused legal advocacy to combat discrimination and to work with clients to draw up their wills. PATF incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and hired Kerry Stoner as its first Executive Director and employee in 1986. 

Led by Stoner, PATF began to provide counseling to clients and free and anonymous HIV-testing to the community. When the Ryan White Act passed in 1990, perceptions about HIV began to shift, the disease became better understood, and more funding became available. PATF expanded its counseling services, legal advocacy, and mentoring programs into rural areas and in 1992 opened its food pantry. In 2017, we opened our medical clinic and rebranded the organization as Allies for Health + Wellbeing to reflect the organization’s expanded mission of serving all those in need of care, not just those living with HIV.  

Now in our third decade of service, Allies for Health + Wellbeing has progressed from an agency that helped people with AIDS to die with dignity into an agency that helps people living with or at risk of HIV/AIDS as well as viral hepatitis and STIs live healthier, more fulfilling lives.

Today, our services include:

• A medical clinic, offering HIV specialty care and primary care
• PrEP for HIV prevention
• HIV, hepatitis C and STI testing and education
• Community outreach, including testing and education
• Gender-affirming care, including HRT
• Routine gynecological care
• Mental and behavioral health services
• Pharmacy services
• Case management
• Food pantry
• Housing program
• Transportation assistance

We continue to be the oldest and largest AIDS service organization in Southwestern Pennsylvania, and now we offer the most comprehensive, integrated medical care at one location, available to all of our clients that we serve in Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Somerset, Washington, and Westmoreland counties.