Challenging Treatment Issues: Exploring Presence and Absence in a Gay Men's Health Crisis Discursive Text

This paper examines Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and its archival newsletter Treatment Issues (1993-2000) to explore one medium by which community-based health organizations construct collective identity and disseminate public health discourse. As the first HIV/AIDS service organization, GMHC played a pivotal role in translating complex medical information into accessible content for affected communities. Through a critical archival analysis, this study interrogates how Treatment Issues signals the presence or absence of various identity categories, revealing how public health discourse foregrounds certain identities while backgrounding others. By examining rhetorical constructions of collective identity, this paper highlights the intersection of service and activism, demonstrating how HIV/AIDS organizing blurred the lines between advocacy and medical support. Findings reveal that while women were present in GMHC's organizing structure, their representation in Treatment Issues was largely constrained to reproductive concerns. Likewise, trans people, incarcerated individuals, and sex workers, despite their vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, were notably absent from this discourse. This analysis contributes to scholarship on organizational communication, collective identity, and critical archival research by demonstrating how seemingly neutral public health texts reinforce socio-political hierarchies. Investigating how GMHC communicated health information via Treatment Issues provides insight into one of many mediums by which community-based organizations shape and are shaped by public health discourse in times of crisis.