L.A. County Restores Funding for Vital AIDS Medical Services
After Innovative Online Grassroots Advocacy Led by AHF, L.A. County Commission on HIV Votes to Restore Over $1M in Funding that Provides Direct HIV/AIDS Medical Care—Including Lifesaving AIDS Drugs—to Some of L.A.’s Most Vulnerable Citizens.
County Will Use Part of $2.5 Million in Additional Federal Ryan White CARE Act Funds to Avert Cuts; L.A. County’s Board of Supervisors to Vote Tuesday to Confirm Restoration of Funds
By: AIDS Healthcare Foundation
Los Angeles, CA - May 19, 2009
Advocates and patients from AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the nation’s largest non-profit HIV/AIDS healthcare provider, claimed victory after a quickly mobilized online grassroots campaign to persuade Los Angeles County public health officials to continue funding a crucial healthcare safety-net for some of the County’s most vulnerable AIDS patients prompted the County restore more than $1 million in funding for vital AIDS medical services that was to be cut from local service providers. Late last week, the Los Angeles County Commission on HIV voted to restore the $600,000 funding cut slated for medical services as well as restoring an additional $400,000 for other core AIDS services. The County’s Board of Supervisors will now vote on Tuesday to confirm the restoration of the funds—despite the fact that the Board was to be presented, and vote on, a previous motion that would have made the cuts to lifesaving AIDS service official at its meeting last week.
Thanks to the public’s participation in the innovative online campaign—which generated over 600 email letters as well as numerous telephone calls in just a matter of hours sent to Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Director of Public Health and Health Officer—Los Angeles County’s Department of Public Health halted its planned cuts to programs providing direct HIV/AIDS medical care, including the provision of lifesaving AIDS drugs.
“After AHF went public with its online campaign to stop cuts to vital AIDS medical services, County health officials quickly scrambled and realized that $2.5 million in additional Ryan White CARE Act funding that Los Angeles was receiving from the federal government made it possible for the County to restore the funding,” said Michael Weinstein, President of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. “After a harsh spotlight was shone on the ill-advised cuts to these vital health care services for people with HIV/AIDS, the Los Angeles County Commission on HIV voted to restore the funding, and the Board of Supervisors now appears set to vote to confirm the Commission’s action overturning the cuts at its meeting today. The County’s swift action followed closely on the heels of our online advocacy campaign—including the all important e-letters and calls of hundreds of people.”
County officials indicated to service providers as far back as January that they intended to slash funding for crucial AIDS medical services, but official news of the cuts to AHF and other providers came in a letter from County health officials just two weeks ago. Dr. Fielding, L.A. County’s Director of Public Health, now asserts that County officials planned all along to restore this AIDS funding; however, lifesaving care and services for some of the County’s most vulnerable citizens most certainly would have been interrupted has the Board of Supervisors voted to first institute these draconian cuts and then subsequently voted to restore the funding.
“At best, the County’s handling of this issue has been inept,” added AHF’s Weinstein. “It seems one hand of the L.A. County bureaucracy doesn’t quite know what the other is doing: The County sent official letters two weeks ago to notify AIDS service providers of the County’s intent to dramatically slash AIDS funding; at the same time, officials in the very same departments were aware of the receipt of the additional federal Ryan White funds coming to L.A. that are now making it possible for the County to halt those cuts. At very least, it seems the County could have avoided unnecessary paperwork—and community anxiety—by shortstopping the initial motion for the Board of Directors that was intended to enact the cuts.”
The cuts would have come at a time when fully half of all people living with HIV are not receiving treatment for their disease, and as a result, may be far more infectious and spread their infection to others. AHF had planned an administrative challenge to halt the cuts; but rallying HIV/AIDS patients, advocates and the public at large via the online campaign to press County officials to stop cuts to vital AIDS medical care seemed to have the intended effect of reversing the County’s actions.
The intent of the Ryan White CARE Act (where the money to offset the cuts is coming from) is to help communities nationwide pay for and deliver HIV/AIDS medical care and services to people in need who have few resources. The Ryan White Act is the law that directs the federal government to fund the majority of domestic HIV/AIDS care and services.
