Jan 21, 2005  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

For the second year in a row, the D.C. government is reducing funds for two local AIDS prevention programs that target gay men, forcing the Whitman-Walker Clinic and the group Us Helping Us to lay off employees and drastically curtail the scope of their HIV prevention efforts.

The HIV/AIDS Administration, which oversees the city’s AIDS programs, has also eliminated a $100,000 grant that enabled Us Helping Us to provide HIV prevention services to transgendered residents.

Ron Simmons, executive director of Us Helping Us, called the action a serious blow to the city’s effort to curtail skyrocketing HIV infection rates among transgendered people.

“We don’t know why this is happening,” Simmons said. “We hear other groups are getting similar cuts.”

Lydia Watts, a senior deputy director of the D.C. Department of Health who oversees HAA, said the cuts came about, in part, from a series of policy changes at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, which provides nearly all funds for the city’s HIV prevention programs.

Change of focus
The CDC announced last year that it would redirect two-thirds of the $49 million it allocates to community-based organizations for HIV prevention programs to new programs targeting people who are already infected with HIV. The announcement stunned AIDS activists, who said the change would drastically reduce or eliminate programs throughout the country that seek to prevent gay men and other groups at risk of HIV from becoming infected.

CDC officials said longstanding programs that emphasize safe-sex messages for HIV-negative people created a health and information “gap” for those already infected. The officials said spending more money on encouraging people to get tested for HIV and educating them on how to prevent spreading the virus to others would have a greater impact on curtailing the overall spread of the disease.

Watts said rules requiring the city to allocate funding levels for HIV prevention programs based on the ranking of population groups with the highest infection rates also led to a reduction in funds for the Whitman-Walker and Us Helping Us programs.

According to Watts, white gay men were ranked seventh among seven risk group populations. She said black gay men tied for fifth place in that ranking. Population groups given higher rankings were intravenous drug abusers, Latinos, women, and persons already infected, among other groups.

In addition, Watts said a 2002 CDC grant that enabled Whitman-Walker to start the HIV prevention program targeting white gay men, which the group calls its “G-Net” program, had a duration of just one year. HAA obtained grants for the program in subsequent years through supplemental CDC funds on a year-by-year basis, but the CDC never made a commitment to fund the program indefinitely, Watts said.

The Whitman-Walker prevention program facing the funding cuts has targeted white gay men through a number of methods, including seminars promoting safer sex and relationship building strategies. The program, which the clinic calls G-Net, also includes sending outreach workers to gay bars and other gay meeting places to distribute condoms and promote safer-sex practices.

The G-Net program received funding of $440,000 in 2002 and 2003, its first two years of operation, according to Stephen McDonald, its former director. In 2004, HAA reduced the funding to $200,000, McDonald said. HAA reduced the funding to just $75,000 for 2005, forcing the clinic to eliminate two full-time positions, said clinic spokesperson Brian Justice.

Simmons said funding for the Us Helping Us program, which targeted black gay men for HIV prevention, had received $400,000 before the city cut it back to $200,000 last year. Simmons said the city reduced the funding to $75,000 for 2005.

He said the cuts in the program targeting black gay men, and the elimination of the programming targeting transgendered people, would force Us Helping Us to lay off three full-time employees and nine part-time employees.

Simmons said he’s aware that the CDC’s change in policy played a role in the funding cutback, but said the change makes no sense because people at high risk for HIV infection will no longer receive prevention messages that programs like Us Helping Us have provided.

“I want to find out what the logic is behind this,” he said.

Watts said she would take steps to seek out other funds for programs such as those run by Us Helping Us and ...