Houston Agencies Join Forces

Houston's Montrose Clinic, a major provider of HIV care and support services in southern Texas, has announced it will merge with the Assistance Fund, which provides health insurance and anti-HIV medications to poor city residents. The groups will form a new nonprofit agency, which has not yet been named. Integration of the organizations is expected to take up to a year. Montrose executive director Katy Caldwell says the merger was necessitated in part by falloffs in federal funding to the separate agencies.