Celebrating 40 years of unconditional care

This year Evergreen Health is celebrating our 40^th birthday. In four decades of serving our community, we’ve grown from a small but mighty team of volunteers to a multi-service healthcare organization with over 500 employees, 6 service locations, 11 buildings and over 28,000 patients. This year, we’re taking a moment (or many moments!) to look back at our history and celebrate how far we’ve come, and to look forward as we continue to grow.

Evergreen’s birthday celebrations started at our annual organization-wide team meeting, the Huddle, this January, where we celebrated the big 4-0 with cake and balloons, and with words from some of the people who have been a part of Evergreen’s history for many of our 40 years.

One of those folks is Kim Lombard, Evergreen’s longest-standing employee, who was hired in 1993 when Evergreen was still known as AIDS Community Services (ACS). At that time, Kim was looking for “a job that meant something.” She applied for an administrative assistant position with ACS, who then had about 25 employees working on the front lines of the HIV/AIDS crisis in Western New York.

Kim recalls how in the 80’s and 90’s, ACS was entrenched in preventing the spread of HIV, treating health complications due to AIDS, fighting stigma and making people who were dying of AIDS-related complications as comfortable as possible in their last days.

This early work was heartbreaking and difficult, and from it emerged Evergreen’s mission to provide people in need with health and supportive services that are accessible, unconditional, and judgment-free.

“No matter how much we’ve grown, the spirit of who we were in our beginning has carried over into who we are now.”

Kim Lombard

As the needs of people living with HIV and at risk of acquiring HIV became better understood over time, we expanded our services to provide specialized care for communities who are disproportionately affected by HIV like communities of color, LGBTQ+ communities, and people who use drugs.

As medical breakthroughs in the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS were made in the mid-90’s, we were able to begin offering services to anyone in need of care, not just the populations who were most affected by HIV. In 2011, we adopted the name Evergreen Health to reflect this growth.

In the last decade, Evergreen has continued to adapt to new health needs in our region as they’ve emerged. While ending the HIV epidemic is still central to our mission, we’ve also answered the call to address other urgent health issues that have since arisen in Western New York, like the opioid use epidemic, the mental health crisis and the COVID pandemic.

As Kim said at the 2023 Evergreen Huddle: “no matter how much we’ve grown, the spirit of who we were in our beginning has carried over into who we are now.”

Evergreen’s roots are in serving those who were rejected by the health care system during the AIDS crisis, and we will always prioritize caring for the health and wellness of underserved communities. 40 years since our beginnings as AIDS Community Services, we’re able to do so much more: Evergreen is a place where anyone can get unconditionally non-judgmental and affirming medical, behavioral and supportive care under one roof.

The 40 years of history that have brought us to where we are today, and the many people who have been a part of that history, deserve to be celebrated! Our organization-wide birthday party was just the beginning – keep an eye out for more celebrations to come throughout 2023.