The Trump administration’s proposed shuttering of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s HIV tracking and prevention project could risk moving America further away from ending the HIV epidemic, according to a health care provider based in Milwaukee.
In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Health and Human Services is debating whether to close the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s HIV Prevention Division. The program spent around $1.3 billion in the 2023 fiscal year to track infections nationwide and promote HIV prevention and testing.
Bill Keeton is vice president and chief advocacy officer at Vivent Health, an organization based in Milwaukee that offers HIV prevention care and treatment services.
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The organization operates in four states and receives more than $5 million in federal funding to provide HIV and STD prevention services, including a medicine to prevent HIV infection called Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, or PrEP. It also provides a variety of medical, dental, pharmacy and mental health services to people living with HIV.
Nearly $2 million of that funding goes to the organization’s work in Wisconsin.
Keeton told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that major changes to the federal project would cost millions to organizations that help people with HIV.
“Make no mistake: that $1.9 million here for Vivent Health in Wisconsin — and [the more than] $1 billion across the United States — is not something that we will easily be able to fill in through state and local investment or private philanthropic investment,” Keeton said.
He told WPR how changes at the CDC could affect HIV care in Wisconsin and beyond.
The following interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
Rob Ferrett: It is unclear what will happen with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s HIV Prevention Division. What is your understanding today of the current status of this federal funding?
Bill Keeton: That’s one of the really frustrating aspects of this. As an organization that is working to save lives … and help people be as healthy as they can be, the current environment in Washington is creating a great degree of uncertainty.
We rely on this $1.9 million in funding we received as, primarily, the only source of funding that we have to deliver these prevention services. Were these services to be moved or were there to be a significant reduction in the workforce at the CDC, not only are we disrupting the care and treatment and prevention infrastructure within our country, we’re losing potentially hundreds if not thousands of years of collective experience and professionalism with a workforce that greatly understands what folks need on the ground to be successful in doing this work in a very real perspective.
It means we run the risk of going backwards in our nation’s work to reduce HIV transmission at a time, quite frankly, when we have all the tools. We have the science. We know how to prevent HIV acquisition. What we lack are the appropriate levels of resources to get those services and interventions in the hands of individuals who need them the most. This is a very concerning time for the future of HIV prevention, care and treatment.
RF: The National Institute of Health has eliminated funding for dozens of HIV-related research grants since President Trump took office in January. That’s according to a CNN analysis of a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services database last week. What are your concerns with the impact on that research?
BK: The fact of the matter is we continue to see incredible advancements in pharmaceutical interventions and treatment for folks living with HIV. We have what are known as long-acting injectables that are coming to market that move from a one pill once a day treatment modality to an injection that someone might be able to take once every three to six months.
Making sure that new medications remain in the pipeline, and making sure that there is research to bring those new treatments to market, is incredibly important.
HIV continues to evolve. The treatments need to continue to evolve with the changes that the virus makes and how we learn more about how the body responds to it … we need to ensure that we’re delivering the resources as a nation to really meet the challenge. And there are a lot of great scientists out there who are doing work every day that are bringing just incredible interventions and treatments to market, and it would be a shame if we lost that momentum.
RF: The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — known as PEPFAR — is a global health program created in 2003 to help nations address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The program has been credited with saving more than 25 million lives, according to the U.S. Department of State. In the past month, the Trump Administration has ended hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and contracts related to this program. How big a concern is that in the wider struggle against HIV and AIDS?
BK: In a number of nations, PEPFAR is the lifeline for folks living with HIV. It is the program that makes sure that they have access to all those medications [that patients with HIV need].
As a virus, HIV doesn’t care about geopolitical borders. It doesn’t care about arbitrary lines drawn on maps. And given the global society that we have, folks are able to move from country to country, from community to community. That is not going to stop.
And so, when we think about how we approach addressing HIV as a nation and as a global leader in this fight, we need to be really mindful of the fact that this is what is helping to keep millions of people across the world — not just here in the United States, but across the world — safe and healthy.
