Miami-Dade's LGBTQ+ health resources center on a few long-standing organizations: Care Resource, a federally qualified community health center founded in 1983 during the height of the AIDS crisis, per the organization's published history; the Florida Department of Health's Miami-Dade locations, which offer free HIV and STI testing; and Pridelines, a community center serving LGBTQ+ youth since 1978, per its own published timeline. Services and hours change, so verify current details on each organization's own page before visiting. This guide is information, not medical advice.
Where do you find HIV testing and prevention in Miami-Dade?
Two doors, mostly. The Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade operates free, confidential HIV and STI testing at its county locations, per the department's published services page. Care Resource offers testing plus prevention services including PrEP — pre-exposure prophylaxis, the daily medication the CDC's 2021 clinical guidance describes as highly effective for preventing HIV — through its Miami and Fort Lauderdale clinics, with a sliding fee scale and insurance enrollment help listed on its own site. The CDC's locator tool (cdc.gov/hiv/locations) maps both testing and PrEP services by ZIP code, statewide and free to use.
What does Care Resource actually provide?
Primary care alongside its HIV specialty, per the organization's published service list: adult medicine, behavioral health, dental, pediatrics, and pharmacy, with a documented history in South Florida's HIV response going back four decades. As a federally qualified health center, it serves patients regardless of insurance status, with fees adjusted to income under the federal sliding-fee requirements that govern such centers. Appointments and eligibility details are on its own site, and its programs change — what does not change is the founding fact: the center began as a volunteer response to AIDS in 1983 and never stopped.
What exists for LGBTQ+ youth?
Pridelines, founded in 1978, runs youth programs including drop-in hours, support groups, and housing-navigation resources, per its published program descriptions. SAVE, the advocacy organization behind much of the county's policy work, maintains community resource listings that include legal and crisis referrals. For crisis support specifically, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline operates nationwide, and the Trevor Project's crisis line serves LGBTQ+ youth nationally — both free, both 24 hours. Local programs verify their own current schedules; the national lines never close.
What about gender-affirming care?
The landscape here has shifted under Florida policy changes across 2022-2023, and any guide that pretends otherwise is out of date the week it publishes. What can be said durably: Care Resource lists gender-affirming services among its offerings, per its published materials, and legal resource organizations including Equality Florida publish current explainers of Florida's restrictions and their litigation status. Anyone navigating these services should check the current rules on the organizations' own pages and with the providers directly, since court challenges have changed what is permitted more than once. The honest summary: the services exist, the law moves, and the organizations track it daily so families do not have to.
How do you pay for any of this?
Three documented routes. Federally qualified health centers adjust fees on the federal sliding scale regardless of insurance. The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, the federal program funded since 1990, covers HIV care and medications for those who qualify, per the federal program's own eligibility description. And Miami-Dade's health department services, including testing, are provided free at its sites. Insurance enrollment help is listed by both Care Resource and the department. The money is genuinely the easiest part of the system, which is a sentence Miami could not have written forty years ago.
For more context, read Where To Get Free HIV Testing And PrEP In Miami.