In this Fierce Healthcare article, Dr. Kellan E. Baker, Executive Director of The Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker, gives commentary about the devastating results and ramifications of the administration’s latest actions.
Excerpt:
“Amid mass layoffs of federal health workers, which began earlier this week, several key public health offices have been gutted.
The HHS Office of Infectious Disease & HIV/AIDS Policy has been eliminated, as has CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention. Additionally, more than 200 federal research grants related to HIV and AIDS have reportedly been terminated.
Both the HHS and CDC offices are reportedly being merged with a separate HHS program that provides treatment to people living with HIV, per Nature. Advocates are concerned about this approach, given the distinct responsibilities around treatment, prevention and surveillance each office has.
With the cuts, amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, estimates there will be as many as 143,000 new HIV infections, 15,000 AIDS-related deaths by 2030 and $60.3 billion in extra treatment costs.
D.C.’s Whitman-Walker Health System, home to a federally qualified health center, a research institute and foundation, has also been affected. Nearly three-quarters of its research funding comes from the NIH. The institute has lost seven awards over the past few weeks.
“We’re actively working now to figure out what comes next,” Kellan Baker, PhD, M.P.H., M.A., executive director at Whitman-Walker’s Institute for Health Research & Policy, told Fierce Healthcare.
Among the projects affected is a planned $7.7 million community-based biomedical research hub in Southeast D.C. Construction was expected to start in the next month. NIH rescinded the bulk of a $2 million grant for the project, which would bring crucial research opportunities to a predominantly Black neighborhood.
“The goal of locating the biomedical research hub in the communities where there is the greatest need… is it increases the accessibility [of trials],” Baker explained. “It also helps ensure accountability.”
The irony is the projects affected help make Americans safer and healthier, Baker said. “We share a goal, at least in name: Make America Healthy. That is the goal of this research,” Baker said. “That shouldn’t be a political question, but unfortunately in this day and age it appears that it is.”
Termination letters sent by NIH to numerous organizations getting funding cuts, seen by Fierce Healthcare, claimed the projects were based on “artificial and non-scientific categories, including amorphous equity objectives” that “are antithetical to the scientific inquiry.” The language, which appears widely verbatim across the board, also claimed DEI studies are “often used to support unlawful discrimination on the basis of race and other protected characteristics.”
Read full article here: https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/finance/experts-speak-out-about-impact-layoffs-funding-cuts-hiv-progress
