The VDCP was initiated in October 1972, and received its first public funding, a grant of $130,460, from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services in November 1974. The materials include funding proposals and contracts, reports, program evaluations, correspondence with Los Angeles County health officials, memoranda and internal correspondence relating to the day-to-day operations of the program, staff recruiting and training, budgets and accounting papers, and information flyers, brochures, and studies on various venereal diseases. The reports to the Los Angeles County Health Department give a detailed picture of the VDCP's activities, which included a mobile unit that visited gay bath houses. The staffing files from September 1974, the Center's first mass hiring of paid staff, include the resumes of many people who were already volunteering at the Center, and several of those applying or hired would have long careers there.