HIV+Hep in the News

It shuttered the HHS Office of Infectious Diseases & HIV Policy that coordinated the federal response. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost staff in its HIV prevention division who conducted studies and surveillance, ran health campaigns and supported local prevention programs. The CDC’s top HIV official was notified he would be among nine senior leaders reassigned to the Indian Health Service. “We’re being cut off at our legs, and they want to make America healthy again?” said Carl Schmid, executive director of the advocacy group HIV + Hepatitis Policy Institute.

“This administration has been concerning for HIV since Day One,” said Carl Schmid, founder of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, a national nonprofit that provides health care. He referred specifically to White House attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion, “and everything we do in HIV is based on disparities, whether you’re gay, Black, Latino.” Schmid noted that Trump is especially interested in wiping out services for transgender people and immigrants — two groups that also are disproportionately affected by HIV.

The HIV+ Hepatitis Policy Institute warned that the US risked losing its ability to prevent further cases “in just a couple days”. The organization’s executive director, Carl Schmid, told the Washington Blade: “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 translate into an increase in new HIV infections and higher medical costs.”

“In a matter of just a couple days, we are losing our nation’s ability to prevent HIV,” Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, said in a statement. “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 expertise of the staff, along with their decades of leadership, has now been destroyed and cannot be replaced,” said Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute. “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.”