Vivent Health, an HIV care provider with locations across four states, is relocating its HIV clinic in Milwaukee, which will expand operations by 30% and enable the site to see an additional 1,000 clients, according to a press announcement by Vivent Health. Last year, the Milwaukee clinic saw nearly 5,000 people, providing HIV testing, prevention, treatment and related wraparound services.

The new clinic will be located at 1311 North Sixth Street, on the corner of McKinley Avenue in the Westown neighborhood and near the Milwaukee Bucks’ Deer District. It will serve the ZIP codes that see the city’s highest prevalence of people living with and testing positive for HIV: 53204, 53214, 53215, 53216 and 53218. What’s more, these areas are medically underserved.

“The need for HIV services is at an all-time high,” said Michael J. Gifford, Vivent Health’s president and chief executive officer, in the press statement. “This new facility will launch us forward to meet that need and begin to end the HIV epidemic in Wisconsin through expanded and effective HIV prevention, care and treatment services.”

Indeed, Vivent Health refers to its Milwaukee clinic as an HIV Medical Home because it offers wraparound services for its HIV clients, including dental care, a pharmacy, case management, mental health care and a food pantry. The new location will house a larger food pantry and three additional dental operatories; other services will also be expanded. 

Renovations on the new space will begin next month and are expected to be completed in April 2023 at a cost of about $9 million.

“We are making a multimillion-dollar investment in a building that has largely been empty for many years,” said Margaret Lidstone, chief development officer. “Drawing on the support of the community, we can turn this vacant space into the model for health care in Milwaukee and beyond.”

Vivent’s current Milwaukee clinic is located at 820 North Plankinton Avenue.

Vivent Health operates clinics in St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri; Austin; Denver; and several locations throughout Wisconsin, making it the second largest HIV provider in the nation, according to the press statement.

Last spring, Vivent Health merged with Thrive Health Connection and opened a clinic in November in Kansas City, where Black Americans and Latinos see higher HIV rates. For more see “Vivent Health Opens a New HIV Care Facility in Kansas City, Missouri.”

Before January 2020, Vivent Health was known as AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin; in recent years, it has also merged with Rocky Mountain CARES in Denver and St. Louis Effort for AIDS. The name Vivent, as POZ reported, combines the Latin verb vivet meaning “to live” with the English word prevent.