NO/AIDS Task Force, now CrescentCare, was founded in 1983 in response to the early devastating effects of the HIV epidemic in New Orleans. The organization began as a single phone line with an answering machine staffed by community volunteers. In the years following, we continued to expand our services in response to community need and the impact of the epidemic on diverse populations.  Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, we added case management,  mental health services, a meal delivery program and a community prevention and education project. Services were expanded to the Houma Thibodaux area in 2001.

In response to the community need for health care in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, and the opportunities offered organizations under the Affordable Care Act, we looked to expand our mission and services as a community health center.  Born out of the civil rights movement and the war on poverty of the 1960s, community health centers responded to the health needs of a community.  One of the first community health centers in the country, Tufts Delta Health Center, was founded in Bolivar Mississippi in 1965 to address the unmet health needs of African American sharecroppers.  It is this rich legacy and history of service that we intentionally joined when we became a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in 2013.   During this transformation, we changed our name to CrescentCare and expanded our mission to provide comprehensive health and wellness services and advocate empowerment for the whole community.

Informed and grounded in these two social justice legacies CrescentCare has continued to expand and grow our services.   We added dental services, pediatrics, and psychiatric service, to our growing list of existing primary medical, behavioral health, health education and supportive services.  To better serve the community, we completed work on our new flagship location and combined four sites into our new home at 1631 Elysian Fields in the fall of 2018.

As we continue to evolve, we are committed to providing high quality, humble and affordable health care and supportive services to the vulnerable in our community.  Our response to systematic racism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, and misogyny is to provide exceptional services and create a culture of humility, intersectionality, and inclusiveness for the entire community.

Our Mission