Community groups lose HIV-prevention money as feds redirect dollars to states

Filed 44m ago · Via Stateline · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Guy Kawasaki · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Nearly 100 community-based organizations across 31 states have lost federal HIV-prevention grants as the Trump administration shifts roughly $90 million through May 2027 to state and local health departments instead. States with the highest HIV diagnoses are merely encouraged, not required, to pass along at least 25 percent to community groups; lower-burden areas are encouraged to pass along 10 percent.

The old program, launched during Trump's first term and continued under Biden, disbursed nearly $240 million since 2021 and aimed to cut HIV incidence 75 percent in five years. Public health researchers estimate community groups would need 35 to 50 percent of the new funding just to match what they got before, and in Minnesota and Oregon even 100 percent of state grants wouldn't cover the gap.

PowerHouse Charlotte, which served gay Black men in North Carolina for 16 years, has already announced it will close. When asked to explain the change, HHS referred the matter to the Office of Management and Budget, and neither OMB nor the White House responded to requests for comment.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

When the people cutting the check won't even say why, you can generally guess the reason isn't one they want printed. Telling states they're encouraged, not required, to keep community clinics funded is a neighborly way of making sure some of them won't. The groups that actually showed up for decades to do this work are finding out that trust and track record don't count for much against a budget line.

Source: Read the original at Stateline → Scored: Heavy Heart · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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