Carl Schmid is the executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com
The executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget has instructed the Centers for Disease Control not to renew $46 million in funding for 96 HIV community organizations around the country, including 11 such organizations in Texas. Abounding Prosperity and Prism Health North Texas are the two Dallas-based HIV agencies affected.
The grants covered essential services aimed at ending the spread of HIV, including testing and referrals to medical care. The slashed funding also gave organizations access to the federal 340B drug program that provides discounted HIV drugs to healthcare organizations such as AP Inc. and Prism Health. Those organizations purchase the HIV meds and distribute them to patients who could not otherwise afford them. Through the drug program, agencies can obtain the drugs for pre-exposure prevention or PrEP and post-exposure or PEP.
The current funding is set to expire in September.
Other Texas organizations affected include AIDS Foundation Houston, AIDS Services of Austin doing business as Vivent Health, BEAT AIDS Coalition Trust in San Antonio, Change Happens! of Houston, Coastal Bend Wellness Foundation in Corpus Christi, Fundacion Latinoamerican de Accion Social, Inc. in Houston, Houston Area Community Services, which does business as 360 Health & Wellness, Special Health Resources for Texas, Inc. in Longview and Valley AIDS Council in Harlingen.
Regionally, one organization in Oklahoma City and three in Louisiana will also lose funding.
Instead of sending funds directly to organizations, the money will be redirected to the states. States may send the money back to the same organizations that are preventing the spread of HIV. Or they may direct the money elsewhere.
Carl Schmid is the executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute. He said the grant was already written and ready to go when the OMB ordered the money redirected to the states.
While these HIV organizations have good relationships with their local governments, what Texas will do with the money is anyone’s guess — especially during an election year. If the money is directed from Austin to the counties, which are charged with healthcare in Texas, counties could then direct the funds to the agencies.
But during this election year where MAGA candidates swept the Republican primaries in Texas and the governor is more concerned with crosswalks than the number of Texans without health insurance, state agencies might not be inclined to restore the funding to the HIV agencies that lobby against them in the legislature.
Schmid said he believes the cut in funding is directly connected to the Trump administration’s hostility to diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — programs and the administration’s aversion to organizations promoting those programs.
He said the administration has voiced support for the goal of ending HIV. But can HIV be addressed in any meaningful way without working with the agencies that are working in diverse communities?
Locally, Abounding Prosperity targets HIV in the Black community, and both Prism Health and AP Inc. work extensively in the LGBTQ+ community.
“You can’t end HIV by cutting Medicaid,” Schmid said. “Or by ignoring certain populations.”
Access to medication is critical in keeping people who are HIV-positive alive. Most, if not all, persons who are taking HIV meds as prescribed lower their viral load count to zero and become undetectable.
Someone who is undetectable will not spread the HIV virus to someone who is negative.
When someone stops taking their medication, the viral load count begins to rise again, and those people can again begin spreading the virus.
So not only is access to medication necessary to keeping people who are HIV-positive alive, those medications prevent the spread of the virus to currently uninfected individuals.
“We want the decision reversed,” Schmid said. “This is a precarious time.”