HIV CDC FOA
The Council was briefed on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s recent funding opportunity announcement (FOA) for funding opportunity announcement (FOA) for HIV prevention programs for health departments. First, the council heard from Ms. Eva Margolies, Associate Director for Planning and Policy Coordination in the CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, who explained that CDC revised the funding requirements to align with the NHAS. The FOA, she explained, responded to the Strategy’s call for CDC to refocus its funded prevention programs for maximum effect on reducing new HIV infections and address any misalignment of HIV prevention resource allocations, ensuring that funding follows the epidemic. In developing the revised requirements, CDC consulted with a variety of stakeholders and made several revisions based on their input. The requirements embody CDC’s commitment to high impact prevention using scalable, cost-effective interventions with demonstrated potential to reduce new infections and yield a major impact on the HIV epidemic. The applications are currently under review at CDC with funding awards anticipated in January 2012. Ms. Margolies shared that CDC is currently planning for capacity building assistance to help grantees adapt to the changes in funding levels that will be phased in over five years. Next, Ms. Julie Scofield, Executive Director of the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD), shared some concerns that her members have about the revisions reflected in the FOA and their potential impact on future HIV prevention efforts across the Nation. These include the fact that NASTAD believes HIV prevention has been and continues to be “woefully underfunded,” reflecting only four percent of Federal domestic HIV investments. NASTAD urged examination of whether all other Federal domestic HIV resources are being used to better purpose than prevention. She noted that a number of State health departments will experience substantial reductions in the levels of funding they receive for HIV prevention activities under this new funding opportunity. This is cause for concern among many States, particularly those with relatively low HIV incidence since the reductions will impair their ability to maintain the HIV prevention infrastructure that they have developed over the years. In addition, Ms. Scofield urged restoration of funding that has been reduced to the pool of resources available to the health departments.
