Atlanta HIV/AIDS organizations forced to cut budgets

From the SOVO :

Atlanta AIDS organizations brace for funding cuts
Hundreds could lose case management, mental and dental health services

By ZACH HUDSON
Aug. 31, 2007

An announcement predicting a second round of cuts to Ryan White CARE Act funding for metro Atlanta left activists and leaders within local AIDS service organizations reeling.

The federal Human Resources Services Administration’s proposed cuts to the Minority AIDS Initiative budget of the Ryan White program, combined with attempts to reclaim federal money allegedly overpaid to Georgia, could add up to Atlanta losing nearly $1.7 million for 2008 and 2009 budgets.

“We’ve not experienced this sort of loss in funding before,” said Jeff Graham, chair of the public policy committee of the Metropolitan Atlanta HIV Health Services Planning Council, which oversees distribution of Ryan White funds for the 22 counties making up the Atlanta Eligible Metropolitan Area.

Though the effect on individual agencies and service providers remains undetermined, Graham said that budgets for specific client services would take the most profound hits if the proposed MAI cuts are left in the 2008 federal budget.

The Atlanta EMA is also currently weathering a punitive reduction from other sections of its Ryan White allotment following a federal government decision, announced in December, to reclaim money it says it overpaid Georgia government agencies as a result of accounting errors.

Graham said the proposed cuts to the Minority AIDS Initiative would force the local council to remove $740,000 from drug reimbursement funds it pays to local AIDS service organizations.

Graham estimates about 430 people would lose or have reduced access to mental health services following the council’s projected $190,000 cut to that service budget. And a $135,000 projected reduction in dental health funds — or about enough to pay a full-time dentist for a year — would result in about 450 fewer available appointments for HIV-positive patients who look to social services for their dental care needs.

LOBBYING UNDERWAY

The U.S. Congress will begin voting on budget appropriations in September. Graham said he and a cadre of AIDS activists will lobby Congress — specifically Georgia’s federal legislative delegation — until the last minute.

“These cuts will be very real next year if additional dollars are not appropriated by Congress. That’s really the important message we need to get out,” Graham said.

“Now is the time when people need to contact their members of Congress before they vote,” he urged.

The local HIV care council estimates about 38,000 Georgians are living with HIV or AIDS. Of those, the council figures about 26,600 are living within the Atlanta EMA.

MAI funds are used to improve HIV-related health outcomes for racial and ethnic minority communities disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS and reduce HIV-related health disparities. The local HIV services council cites Georgia Department of Human Resources figures that estimate 85 percent of newly diagnosed HIV infections in 2005 were among communities of color.

The most likely alternative treatment venue for people with HIV who depend on social services will be indigent medical care through hospital emergency rooms, Graham said.

“And in Atlanta, that means Grady,” he said, referring to the beleaguered Grady Health System, itself scrambling to stay afloat among well-documented financial woes.

Tracy Elliott, executive director of AID Atlanta, the largest AIDS service organization in Georgia, said his agency is from Ryan White funds or otherwise — prepping for any proposed cuts — by looking closer at private philanthropy to help make up its budget.

Elliott said that as a result of the proposed MAI cuts, his organization would likely take its biggest cut in case management funds, which he said would have an adverse effect on client services.

“We’ve known for some time that we would have to look elsewhere — simply for our survival,” he said.

Out of an approximately $6 million annual operating budget, just over half of AID Atlanta’s cash comes from federal and state grant payments. The organization brought in $1.4 million from its annual AIDS Walk fundraiser in 2006, on top of nearly $600,000 in private donations in 2006.

Elliott will join Graham and other local AIDS advocates on a lobbying trip to Washington, D.C., in September to address the MAI cuts and other issues.

Over at AIDS Survival Project, news of the MAI cuts is troubling, but not devastating, according to executive director Melanie Sovine.

“We’re not bracing for that because we do not receive those funds,” she said.

AIDS service organizations should prepare for uncertain financial times as a result of government funding because, as Sovine characterized it, the federal government has yet to fully fund HIV social and medical services since the creation of the Ryan White Care Act in 1990.

“The Ryan White Care Act has never — never means never — met the full financial needs of folks who depend on that public resource for care and treatment,” she said.

“We’re going backwards. It’s not as if we’ve met our goal since 1990, and we’re going backward before ever having met the goal,” said Sovine, who has worked as a consultant on HRSA issues.

AIDS Survival Project depends on a diversified body of financial resources, according to Sovine. She added that the organization has recently been awarded $175,000 in new grant money.

A $150,000 grant from the Academy for Educational Development will pay for AIDS Survival Project to develop outreach offices in two as-yet-undetermined rural locations. The grant will also contribute to a public awareness campaign that preaches against anti-AIDS and HIV stigma.

Additionally, Sovine said that AIDS Survival Project was awarded a $50,000 grant from the Elton John AIDS Foundation — a full 100 percent increase over the last grant AIDS Survival Project received from the foundation.