Public Statement 3/19/25
Equitas Health on Wednesday joined eleven of the nation’s leading LGBTQ+, HIV, and health organizations to raise the alarm about the Trump administration’s planned actions to defund critical HIV prevention efforts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The anticipated actions will severely impede the nation’s ability to prevent new HIV infections, undoing decades of hard-won progress toward ending the HIV epidemic.
HIV advocates across the country learned this week about plans to end more than $1 billion in funding for the CDC’s HIV prevention initiatives, close the Division of HIV Prevention, and make deep cuts to CDC personnel. Funding changes will reduce nationwide access to powerful HIV prevention tools, including pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), surveillance initiatives to track outbreaks and infection rates, and prevention for not only HIV but also sexually transmitted infections (STIs), viral hepatitis, and tuberculosis (TB). The new plan runs counter to the Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) initiative enacted in 2019 during Trump’s first administration. It aimed to reduce new HIV infections by 90% by 2030 and led to nearly 7,000 fewer HIV cases in 2022 compared to 2016. There are currently more than 30,000 new HIV infections nationwide every year.
Closing the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention would not only have a devastating effect on the nation’s progress in preventing new cases of HIV and ending the epidemic, it would also result in rising costs for the country. Currently, HIV, STI, viral hepatitis, and TB prevention programs provide cost savings for U.S. taxpayers. With an average lifetime cost of $500,000 for a person living with HIV, it would only take an average of 40 more new HIV infections per state every year to exceed the $1 billion saved by making cuts to the CDC Division of HIV Prevention. Without critical federal public health infrastructure devoted to HIV prevention, new cases of HIV would likely far exceed that estimate.
“We are outraged and deeply alarmed by the Trump administration’s reckless moves to defund and deprioritize HIV prevention. These abrupt and incomprehensible possible cuts threaten to reverse decades of progress, exposing our nation to a resurgence of a preventable disease with devastating and avoidable human and financial costs. Without the critical support of the CDC HIV Prevention Division, countless lives will be at risk—more people will fall ill, more lives will be lost, and we will be thrust back into an HIV epidemic reminiscent of the darkest chapters in public health history,” said the CEOs of the aligned organizations listed below.
David Ernesto Munar, President and CEO at Equitas Health, added: “Defunding the federal government’s HIV prevention efforts is not just reckless – it’s counterintuitive to the ultimate goal of ending the HIV epidemic. The CDC’s tracking, research, testing, and prevention programs are critical tools in the nationwide, interconnected efforts of organizations like ours. The government should be in the business of removing barriers to the success of public health programs, not creating instability and fear with broad, abrupt funding cuts.”
The following LGBTQ, HIV and health organizations condemn the Trump administration’s planned actions to defund critical HIV prevention efforts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
AIDS United is also mobilizing support to defend HIV prevention funding to CDC. Find out more: https://aidsunited.org/action/policy-action-center/protect-cdc/
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