More than 100 lawmakers in the House of Representatives and the US Senate are calling on President Donald Trump to maintain federal HIV/AIDS services amid reports that the administration is terminating grants for HIV prevention in the US and may shut down the HIV prevention division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the situation, first reported on March 18 that the Trump administration was contemplating slashing the federal government’s funding for HIV prevention in the United States. The New York Times subsequently reported that some grants were canceled at the National Institutes of Health, including those related to transgender individuals. The Trump administration is weighing whether to move some of the CDC’s prevention initiatives over to the Health Resources and Services Administration, which provides funding to state and local health departments and community organizations offering HIV services, according to the Times.
“We write to express deep concern about reports that the Trump administration is considering eliminating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of HIV Prevention within the National Center of HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention (NCHHSTP),” noted the March 21 letter, which was addressed to the president and signed by 101 lawmakers. “Scaling back or eliminating this division will result in thousands of new cases of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the United States, opening the way for babies to be born with HIV, costing the federal government and taxpayers billions of dollars, and leading to unnecessary deaths across the country.”
On March 21, the day the letter was delivered, it was shared on X by out gay Congressmember Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, who said he spearheaded the Democratic-led letter with Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Jeff Merkley of Oregon. Among the dozens of other signatures included Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York along with several out lawmakers, including Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Congressmembers Ritchie Torres of New York, Angie Craig of Minnesota, and Robert Garcia of California.
The letter also reminded the president that the recently approved spending bill continued to provide funding to the CDC for HIV/AIDS programs.
“Accordingly, we expect CDC will continue to carry out these programs,” the letter stated.
The developments follow the Trump administration’s previous moves to gut international HIV/AIDS programs under USAID, though the administration has insisted that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS (PEPFAR) will continue to carry out its work. The United Nations AIDS agency on March 24 warned that there could be 2,000 new HIV infections across the globe if the United States does not restore its funding under USAID.
The second Trump administration’s approach to fighting HIV/AIDS appears to be be out of step with the first Trump administration, which in 2019 released a plan to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. The Department of Health and Human Services at the time called for a multi-year program to diagnose, treat, respond, and protect individuals across 48 counties and in Puerto Rico and Washington, DC.
In the letter, lawmakers reminded the president that prevention was a key element of that plan — and they stressed that preventive efforts tend to reduce costs in the long run.
“Prevention provides a large return on investment for the federal government — adjusted for inflation, a lifetime of medical costs for a person with HIV can be over $500,000,” the letter stated. “Losing the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention would be an enormous loss to HIV providers. The only other major dedicated source of HIV/AIDS funding is the flagship Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, which statutorily is unable to cover services for people who are not already diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and thus cannot cover any prevention-only services. If this funding is eliminated, state budgets that are already stretched thin will be unable to completely replace these lost resources the federal government provides.”
Later in the letter, costs were again cited as a key reason why the funding should continue, saying it is important to “avoid unnecessarily spending billions in taxpayer dollars down the line when HIV rates eventually skyrocket due to this potential action.”
