Building a community-based consortium for AIDS patient services.

The authors describe a 3-year effort by a public health care system in a large metropolitan area to obtain Federal funds for treating patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). During that process, program planners moved incrementally from proposing an exclusively medical model to one emphasizing the activities of a coalition of community based organizations (CBO). Successive proposals for Federal funding reflected increasing understanding of the nature and functioning of CBOs in providing case management and other support services. The third application proposed devoting 34.5 percent of the budget to CBO activities. That application, which was successfully funded, provided leverage and momentum for the concept of the interdisciplinary, broadly based services consortium which has evolved in Denver since 1989. The consortium has been instrumental in the 55.9 percent reduction in the cost of medical care for AIDS patients that has occurred.