Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute and a former PACHA co-chair, said he wasn’t surprised by the removal of PACHA members. “The real question is how quickly will they appoint new members and who will they be?” Schmid said. Schmid said he is concerned about the broader direction the administration is taking on HIV policy.
“Hopefully, they will realize their wrongs and correct them, but we are very concerned that they’re targeting the populations most impacted by HIV,” Carl Schmid said. “So we are rather surprised by the 180, but we’re not losing hope yet. Through public awareness, Congress, and other means, we hope advocacy will pay off and that they will get back on track so we can end HIV. Without this government funding, and with the loss of all the staff support and research, we’re definitely going to go backward—and that’s really sad.”
The impact on HIV prevention is being felt by these staff cuts. Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, stated, “The expertise of the staff, along with their decades of leadership, has now been destroyed and cannot be replaced. We will feel the impacts of these decisions for years to come, and it will certainly, sadly, translate into an increase in new HIV infections and higher medical costs.”
The national nonprofit HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute is calling on the HHS to restore the workers at numerous offices including the Office of Infectious Diseases and HIV Policy and the HHS Office of Minority Health, a division supporting the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and the Bureau of Primary Health Care at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). In his first term, President Donald Trump engaged in a campaign to end the HIV epidemic, but that campaign was conducted by a now-shuttered office, reported Fierce Healthcare. “It’s just so ironic that DOGE wants to increase government efficiency—well this is the office that did that,” Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, told Fierce.
Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute and a former PACHA co-chair, said HIV policy in the U.S. is in “crisis mode” after the layoffs. “We just don’t know what is happening with HIV in this country anymore,” he said.