According to the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, layoffs included the entire staff of the HHS Office of Infectious Diseases & HIV Policy and the HHS Office of Minority Health, the policy and data division supporting the Health Resources & Services Administration’s Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program and hundreds of employees at HRSA’s Bureau of Primary Health Care.
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.
Fears are growing that the trump administration may eliminate all funding for the CDC’s HIV prevention program. Last week the U.S. government canceled nearly 70 LGBTQ health grants to 46 institutions totaling nearly $40 million when awarded. Those decisions are likely to have a big impact in Louisiana which has the 4th highest HIV diagnosis rate in the country. Carl Schmid is the executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute. He tells Red River Radio News that right now the U.S. sees 32,000 new HIV infections every year. “It’s just going to lead to more infection, more lives turned upside down, more families turned upside down, more HIV in the community which then just leads to more infections.”
In his first term, President Donald Trump launched a campaign to end the HIV epidemic. That very campaign was coordinated by one of the now-cut HHS offices. “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 Healthcare. Schmid previously served as co-chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS and of the Ending the HIV Epidemic Subcommittee.
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.