For Immediate Release
Media Contact:
Justin Burke -
213.201.1525
jburke@apla.org
AIDS PROJECT LOS ANGELES COMMENDS LEGISLATURE FOR PRESERVING AIDS FUNDING
Los Angeles, CA, August 24, 2007 – AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) today commended Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and California legislators for passing a state budget that fully-funds the life saving AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) and provides much needed increases to other HIV/AIDS programs – including a $4 million increase for viral load and resistance testing.
However, APLA said both the Legislature and the governor should have used $7.28 million more in ADAP program savings and rebate surpluses to augment HIV/AIDS prevention funding, especially for minority communities where infection rates continue to increase.
”The state Office of AIDS achieved real savings by efficiently managing the ADAP program,” Thompson said. “Those savings should have gone back into other Office of AIDS programs, not to the general fund.”
“HIV/AIDS programs are being slowly starved of resources, at both the federal and state level,” Thompson said. “If we expect to reduce the number of new infections each year, especially in hard hit communities of color and the gay community, then we need more money to get the job done.
Ryan White CARE Act funding – the largest dedicated source of federal funding for HIV/AIDS care, treatment and services – has been flat funded or cut over the past several years. This year, lower levels of CARE Act funding decimated programs in some California jurisdictions, like San Francisco, and provided only minimal increases to others like Los Angeles.
California prevention funding was cut by some $4 million during the Davis administration, and HIV/AIDS prevention programs have been largely flat funded ever since.
APLA and other community advocates met with state officials throughout the year to advocate for more funding across the entire HIV/AIDS portfolio. The Therapeutic Monitoring Program, under funded for several years, is particularly cost effective. It provides local health departments with vouchers to pay for CD4, viral load, and drug resistance testing for low-income, underinsured, or uninsured people with HIV/AIDS who rely on ADAP for their expensive but vital drug therapies. TMP testing helps ensure these complicated drug regimens are working to produce optimum health outcomes.
“We were pleased to see money restored to the TMP and other programs,” Thompson said. “But restoring money that was previously cut only gets us back to where we were. We need new resources to fight a growing epidemic.”
Other HIV/AIDS-related items in the state budget include $288.9 million to fully fund ADAP; as much as $1.8 million to restore lost federal funding to several California health jurisdictions; $1.5 million to fund a web‑based case management system that supports client access to care and treatment; and $500,000 to support the development and delivery of capacity building activities.
The budget also delays a state cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) grants. Thousands of Californians disabled with full-blown AIDS receive some $856 a month through this joint federal/state program. The California Budget Project estimates that the delay will save the state some $184.7 million in 2007-08. The budget also cuts an estimated $315 million from CalWorks, which provides short term help to families for housing, food, utilities, clothing or medical care.
“Asking people who are too sick to work, and barely surviving, to forgo routine cost of living increases is hardly what we call sharing the pain,” Thompson said. ”These cuts force people on welfare and disability to choose between rent and food and vital health care needs.”
AIDS Project Los Angeles, one of the largest non-profit AIDS service organizations in the United States, provides bilingual direct services, prevention education and leadership on HIV/AIDS-related policy and legislation. Founded by four friends in 1982, APLA is a community-based, volunteer-supported organization with local, national and global reach. For more information, visit www.apla.org
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