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April 10-16, 2014
Volume 86 • Issue 35
CDC Locks Out Black Providers in New Round of Funding
By Roz Edward The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta came under heavy fire recently when it awarded $115 million over five years to 21 organizations to provide technical assistance and capacity building to health departments, AIDS service organizations and community-based organizations, implementing high-impact prevention and improving outcomes in the care continuum for people living with HIV/AIDS. The public outcry came though when it was discovered that no black organizations were among the new CDC grantees. The impact of the CDC’s negligence effectively locks black HIV/ AIDS organizations out of critical funding, relegating them to lower-tier care providers for minority patients. “I think it is so clear (that) HIV is a health issue; it is a civil rights issue; it is an urban renewal issue; it is a men’s issue; it is a women’s issue. … I think the most important thing for black folks to understand is that HIV is our issue,” says the Black AIDS Institute president and CEO Phil Wilson. “It is not our only issue, but the truth of the matter is, whether we like it or not, HIV is chiefly our issue and we really do not have a single human being in our community to spare or waste.” The Black AIDS Institute is the only national HIV/AIDS
think tank focused exclusively on black people. The Institute’s mission is to stop the AIDS pandemic in black communities by engaging and mobilizing black institutions and individuals in efforts to confront HIV. The Institute interprets public and private sector HIV policies, conducts training, offers technical assistance, disseminates information and provides advocacy mobilization from a uniquely and unapologetically Black point of view. CDC statistics identify African Americans as being at the highest risk in the population of contracting the disease. The rate of new HIV infection in African Americans is eight times that of whites based on population size. Gay and bisexual men account for most new infections among African Americans; young gay and bisexual men aged 13 to 24 are the most affected of this group. “We need to be fighting for each and every one of us, and it does not matter your gender or sexual orientation, age or socioeconomic class … every black person counts towards the survival of our race,” adds Wilson. The Black AIDS Institute reports that there are about 1.2 million Americans living with HIV today. Nearly 50 percent of them are black. For women living with HIV in the U.S. the numbers are starling, nearly 64 percent are black. Among gay and bisexual men, the rate of infection is 32 percent.
Wilson contends that health departments and organizations that desperately need assistance in building capacity to respond to a rapidly changing health care environment will be unable to turn to a technical assistance provider grounded in the experience of black communities. “The CDC might maintain that the pool of black organizations that applied was small, some did not demonstrate sufficient programmatic capacity, some had administrative challenges, while others were eliminated for technical reasons associated with the application,” says The Black Aids Institute president. Critics and supporters of the CDC’s funding decisions cite cultural competencies as a root issue. Smaller organizations which are sufficiently equipped to deliver services may be less able to commit resources to prepare the grant applications. Each year, the federal government commits significant resources to the fight against HIV/AIDS. To increase the reach and effectiveness of HIV/AIDS programs, non-federal entities and researchers may receive federal funds in the form of direct grants, contracts and cooperative agreements to support medical research and to expand HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention and treatment programs.