Resource Center issued a call to action today (Wednesday, March 19) urging people to contract their representatives in Congress to stop the Trump administration’s reported plans to defund and dismantle the Centers for Disease Control’s Division of HIV Prevention and government funding for HIV prevention.
Read Texas Health Action’s statement on the proposed the proposed cuts.
According to reports by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, March 18, plans for those cuts could be announced as soon as today, while a Department of Health spokesperson told WSJ that “no final decision on streamlining CDC’s HIV Prevention Division has been made.”
WSJ also reports that the Trump administration is preparing for “deep cuts of personnel” at the CDC and a reorganization of the agency.
WSJ notes: “The cuts and reorganization would take advantage of a weakness of the agency’s legal underpinnings: No single law outlines its purposes and authorizes its many programs. … The department funds state and local surveillance programs for HIV, syringe services and community outreach initiatives [spending] about $1.3 billion on the prevention of HIV, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections and tuberculosis in the 2023 fiscal year.”
The newspaper also/ points out that the administration already has made cuts to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPfAR) which supplies antiretroviral drugs to millions of people around the world, and it has suspended the work of the U.S. Agency for International Development which helped administer PEPfAR.
Sign the Human Rights Campaign’s petition against HIV prevention funding cuts.
Resource Center’s call to action today stressed that cutting HIV prevention funding and efforts “could devastate HIV prevention in the United States,” allowing a “resurgence of this preventable disease, with many people becoming unnecessarily sick and millions of dollars in costs to taxpayers.”
Resource Center urged individuals to call their U.S. senators and representatives to “do everything they can to stop these cuts.” You can find your elected officials by calling the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 for the Senate and 202-225-3121 for the House.
The organization offered this sample phone script for those who call to use:
“My name is _________, I am one of your constituents. I live in _________ and my zip code is _________.
I have heard extremely worrying reports that the Trump Administration is planning to completely eliminate the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention, potentially within the next 24 hours.
If the Trump administration were to follow through on this it could destroy any chance we have to end the HIV epidemic in the US, dismantling critical prevention efforts and leading to an unnecessary resurgence of this preventable disease.
The work of the CDC Division of HIV Prevention is essential and it is not something that can be covered by state budgets or the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program. If this funding is cut, the services it funds will not be replaced, meaning more people will contract HIV, more people will get sick, and more people will die.
I urge you to publicly condemn the proposed elimination of the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention and to demand that the Trump Administration honor its past commitments to ending the HIV epidemic in the U.S.”
Resource Center also offers this link to send a message to legislators in Washington. While “time is of the essence, so calls are most effective,” the organization urges people to use the automated message to reinforce the call to stop the cuts, using the link to “enter your information and be matched with your elected officials. Feel free to add your own thoughts to the message we have started for you.”
“We need all hands on deck to stop this dangerous move,” the organization stressed.
— Tammye Nash
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