News
May 18, 2011
2011 Summer Hours
AlphaBetterCare will now be open Thursday evenings!
We are pleased to announce our summer office hours for 2011, which will begin on June 21st. Our new schedule is as follows: Tuesdays from 9am to 6pm; Wednesdays from 9am to 6pm; Thursdays from noon to 8pm; Fridays from 10am to 6pm; and some Saturdays from 10am to 6pm. We are planning to be open two Saturdays a month; please check with us for the exact dates. Note that we will be closed for lunch from 1 to 2pm, except on Thursdays when we will be closed from 4 to 5pm.
We will be closing for summer vacation on Friday, July 8th and reopening Tuesday, July 19th.
As always, we are available to existing patients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week through our patient portal or directly to the doctor’s mobile phone in case of an urgent need.
Address
AlphaBetterCare
250 West 57th Street Suite 1430
New York, NY 10019
Telephone and e-mail
212.247.8260
212.247.8262 fax
info@alphabettercare.com
March 10, 2011
Dr. Grossman teaching at Columbia University
Clinical Appointment Awarded
We are proud to announce that Howard A. Grossman, MD of AlphaBetterCare is now Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, effective March 1, 2011. He is teaching Foundations of Clinical Medicine on Thursday afternoons.
Address
AlphaBetterCare
250 West 57th Street Suite 1430
New York, NY 10019
Telephone and e-mail
212.247.8260
212.247.8262 fax
info@alphabettercare.com
March 1, 2011
New Office Hours for Spring 2011
AlphaBetterCare now open five days a week!
We are pleased to announce new office hours effective immediately. Our new schedule is as follows. Tuesdays from 9am to 5pm. Wednesday from 10am to 6pm. Thursdays from 9am to 1pm. Fridays from 10am to 6pm. Saturdays from 10am to 2pm. As always, we are available to existing patients 24 hours a day through our patient portal or directly to the doctor’s mobile phone in case of an urgent need.
Address
AlphaBetterCare
250 West 57th Street Suite 1430
New York, NY 10019
Telephone and e-mail
212.247.8260
212.247.8262 fax
info@alphabettercare.com
January 3, 2011
Dr. Grossman quoted in The New York Times
City’s Graphic Ad on the Dangers of H.I.V. Is Dividing Activists
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
The advertisement opens like a French film noir, showing portraits of melancholy-looking men standing against a shadowy black-and-white backdrop of menacing New York City streets. “When you get H.I.V.,” the narrator intones, “it’s never just H.I.V.”
To music that telegraphs calamity, the advertisement warns of osteoporosis, “a disease that dissolves your bones,” flashes a gory picture of anal cancer and delivers a punch line about the importance of using condoms.
The New York City Health and Mental Hygiene Department released the advertisement on YouTube and television in early December, intending to show that even though an H.I.V. diagnosis is no longer a death sentence, neither do H.I.V. drugs guarantee good health. But since then, several mainstream gay groups have organized against it, calling it stigmatizing and sensationalistic, and demanding that the city pull it from circulation. And in response, other gay activists have rushed to the health department’s defense.
“It’s about time,” Larry Kramer, the writer and a founder of Act Up, wrote in an e-mail to friends and fellow activists after seeing the spot. “This ad is honest and true and scary, all of which it should be. H.I.V. is scary, and all attempts to curtail it via lily-livered nicey-nicey ‘prevention’ tactics have failed.”
For New York, the H.I.V. advertisement is just the latest in a series of graphic YouTube public service ads tackling health issues like smoking, obesity and childhood poisoning, created to reach young people through a medium they understand.
The H.I.V. public service ad falls into a tradition of attention-grabbing messages going back to the high school driver’s education films of car crashes on rain-slicked highways, and the graphic films about syphilis shown to Army recruits. A more recent model might be the “Truth” antismoking campaign, which tapped into young people’s suspicions of the adult world, sponsored by the American Legacy Foundation, as part of the 1998 tobacco settlement.
Health officials said the spot had also appeared on television and would continue to run through mid-January on TimeWarner, Cablevision and FiOS cable networks, WNYW (Channel 5) and WPIX (Channel 11).
Some gay organizations are not happy.
“We know from our longstanding H.I.V. prevention work that portraying gay and bisexual men as dispensing diseases is counterproductive,” said Marjorie Hill, chief executive of Gay Men’s Health Crisis. “Studies have shown that scare tactics are not effective.”
Jarrett Barrios, president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, known as Glaad, said the advertisement “misses the mark in fairly and accurately representing what it’s like to live with H.I.V./AIDS.”
But city health officials say the advertisement was tested on focus groups of the target audience — primarily Latino and black men between ages 18 and 30 — and also reflected the city’s experience of what worked in its past antismoking campaigns, which included stomach-turning images of amputated fingers, tracheotomies and what was depicted as a dead smoker’s aorta.
“One of the points they kept making is you need to hit hard and do something to counteract the pharmaceutical ads that say having H.I.V. is a walk in the park,” Dr. Monica Sweeney, assistant commissioner of the city’s bureau of H.I.V. prevention and control, said recently.
Dr. Sweeney said the city stood by the advertisement and was pleased that it was getting attention, even if through controversy.
The campaign, which cost $726,000, was produced by DCF Advertising and financed by a federal grant, officials said.
In the last few days, the National Association of People with AIDS and the H.I.V. Health and Human Services Planning Council of New York have added their voices to the opposition. Another group, Housing Works, also opposes the spot, a spokesman said.
In a Dec. 17 letter to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the planning council, which includes service providers and people living with H.I.V./AIDS, said that while it was true that older adults with H.I.V. might be at greater risk of developing cancer, dementia and osteoporosis, the ad “implies that young adults living with H.I.V. suffer from these conditions, too — and that is false.”
The letter said that getting more advice from gay men into how to promote H.I.V. prevention, and “acknowledging their resilience in the face of this epidemic, will be far more successful than perpetuating outdated images of sickness, dying and death.”
The advertisement’s critics cited research by Peter Salovey, a psychology professor at Yale, and colleagues, who found that threatening messages did not necessarily lead people to adopting healthier behaviors and could be counterproductive. The researchers also found that many preventive health behaviors, like using sunscreen, could be better promoted through positive than negative messages. In a 2002 paper, Dr. Salovey and his colleagues said, “One could hypothesize that condom use, because it is a preventive behavior, would be better promoted by stressing its benefits.”
But Dr. Salovey said he had also published research showing that negative-consequence ads did work better for some health campaigns, including one in which low-income minority women were urged to undergo H.I.V. testing.
He added that he could not pass judgment on New York’s condom advertisement. “As our research shows,” he said in an e-mail, “there are situations when messages stressing benefits are more persuasive and other situations when messages stressing the risks of not taking action are more persuasive.”
Dr. Howard Grossman, a Manhattan internist and H.I.V. specialist, said the city’s approach was worth trying.
“Younger gay men are not making some kind of rational choice to have unprotected sex the way many activists are maintaining in this disagreement,” Dr. Grossman said. “These younger people are, like most young people having sex, living in the moment and making split-second, uninformed choices about unprotected sex.
“The point is that there’s a whole new generation out there who needs to learn that H.I.V. is a disease to stay away from, and so a fear-based ad directed at them is a whole new thing.”
Mr. Kramer, the author of “The Normal Heart,” an autobiographical play about AIDS in 1980s New York City, said H.I.V. treatment had bred complacency and a false sense of safety to gay men too young to remember a generation of gay men dying.
“Everybody thinks all you need to take is one pill, which is just malarkey,” said Mr. Kramer, who is H.I.V.-positive. “Nobody takes one pill. I mean, I take like 10.”
Link to the original story on The New York Times web site.
May 1, 2010
Announcing new services. Botox, Radiesse and Juvederm treatments now available!
AlphaBetterCare Aesthetic
As a holistic center for well being, we care about your self-esteem and happiness with the way you look. We offer Botox as well as facial fillers Juvederm and Radiesse to help you achieve the appearance you want and increase your satisfaction with your life. Our goal is to make you look refreshed and natural, not over-corrected. Especially beneficial for people with premature aging, our aesthetic services are offered to all our patients as a discreet way to improve your looks. A better life starts with better care.
Experienced medical professional
At AlphaBetterCare, you will be seen only by our physician, Howard A. Grossman, MD. Experienced in treatments with injectables, Dr. Grossman has recently completed new training in the latest injection techniques and new procedures. Using the best products available, he will discuss your desired outcome in detail and work with you to create the appearance you want. We can relax wrinkles, fill hollow areas and deep lines and creases, volumize and contour the lips, cheeks and jawline, and even lift areas of sagging skin.
Hyperhidrosis and lipoatrophy correction
Dr. Grossman is an expert at correcting the signs of lipoatrophy that can result from taking anti-HIV medications. These treatments may be covered by Medicare or a manufacturer assistance program. In addition, we can use Botox to treat severe sweating.
Introductory pricing
For a limited time, we are pleased to offer a special discount off our regular prices on all aesthetic services. Visit our Aesthetic Services page for more information about the treatments available.
Address
AlphaBetterCare
250 West 57th Street Suite 1430
New York, NY 10019
Telephone and e-mail
212.247.8260
212.247.8262 fax
info@alphabettercare.com
Thursday, April 22, 2010
6:30 to 8:00pm at The LGBT Center
Hot Sex!
Sex, Men, and Sexually-Transmitted Infections.
First in a new series of GLBT Health presentations and panel discussions moderated by Howard A. Grossman, MD.
Other than HIV, what Sexually Transmitted Infections should I be concerned about? How do I know if I might have an STI? What can I do to protect myself? These questions and more will be answered in this lively presentation and panel discussion featuring two well-known researchers and a doctor with over twenty years of experience treating gay men. A question-and-answer period will let audience members ask specific questions and get vivid answers from the panel. No question is too simple or too advanced—or too sexual—for this group. Adults only!
Panelists and Presentations:
Jeffrey T. Parsons, PhD. Professor and Chair, Dept of Psychology, Hunter College, CUNY. Dr. Parsons, the Director of the Center for HIV/AIDS Educational Studies and Training (CHEST) will speak about the Center’s findings on sexually transmitted infections among men who have sex with men in New York City. These community level data will show prevalence of various STIs across different groups of MSM, as well as their trends over the past 6 years. Dr. Parsons will touch on research methodology, age differences and the association between substance use and STIs.
Demetre Daskalakis, MD. Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, NYU Langone Medical Center. Dr. Daskalakis, Founder and Medical Director of the Men’s Sexual Health Project (M*SHP) , will talk about the project’s mission to promote sexual health among people living with HIV and highly sexually active men who have sex with. M*SHP, recognized by Mayor Bloomberg, continues to provide state of the art HIV and STI Testing in NYC to men attending sex clubs, parties and events. Dr. Daskalakis will discuss STI trends among sexually active men he tests at commercial sex venues with specific emphasis on areas where prevention is not adequately serving this population.
Howard Grossman, MD. Physician at AlphaBetterCare with over twenty years of experience treating gay men. Dr. Grossman will moderate the panel and will also speak about the personal health implications of the information presented. Specifics like: what symptoms you should look out for; what tests to make sure you get; what risks are associated with the sexual practices you enjoy—and what kind of care and treatment to get if you suspect you might have an infection. Keeping yourself healthy is a partnership between you and your doctor, and Dr. Grossman will discuss what you need to tell your doctor and how to make that relationship work so you have the healthiest and happiest life possible.
LGBT Community Services Center
208 West 13th Street, New York City
212.620.7310
See the event page on Facebook
March 30, 2010
Announcing Flu Vaccine Reservations!
Influenza vaccines now recommended for all adults
The New York City Department of Health and the Center for Disease Control recently recommended that all adults receive annual influenza vaccinations. This change will mean that in the upcoming 2010-2011 flu season there will be even more shortages and long waits to get vaccinated. The new vaccine will include H1N1 and the other predominant strains that are circulating.
Get your flu vaccine quickly and easily at AlphaBetterCare by making an advance reservation now. We will notify you in the fall when the vaccines arrive and you’ll be able to make an appointment or visit us during one of our drop-in vaccination times. We also offer the option of coming to you. If you have a group of 10 or more people we’ll schedule a time to come to your office—or wherever you are.
Reserve a vaccine or make an appointment now!
The reservation is free. AlphaBetterCare patients with participating health insurance will pay only their regular visit co-pay at the time of vaccination. If you do not have participating health insurance or are not one of our patients, the cost of the vaccination will be $50. This fee may be submitted for insurance reimbursement.
Call us at 212-247-8260 or email us at info@alphabettercare.com to reserve your vaccine and to receive more information about the services we offer—and the benefits of being an AlphaBetterCare patient. We look forward to getting to know you better!