Federal Affairs
The San Francisco AIDS Foundation is one of the nation's leading community voices on national HIV-related policy issues. Together with our local and national partners, the AIDS Foundation is actively involved in advocacy to develop and implement a National AIDS Strategy and the formulation of HIV/AIDS elements of proposed national healthcare reform legislation. We are engaged in the annual federal budget and appropriations process to ensure adequate funding for medical care, drug treatments and support services through the Ryan White CARE Act. The Foundation also advocates for appropriate funding and programmatic initiatives in HIV prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and HIV/AIDS housing services provided through the Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS (HOPWA) program.
Since 1998, our Public Policy Department has also worked in coalition to secure substantial new funding for the Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative, which seeks to reduce racial disparities in HIV-related health outcomes by strengthening the organizational infrastructure and service capacity of minority community-based organizations. The federal government currently provides nearly $400 million in targeted funding for the Initiative.
In 1995, 2000 and again in 2006, the Public Policy Department played a key leadership role within the Communities Advocating Emergency AIDS Relief (CAEAR) Coalition to successfully reauthorize the Ryan White CARE Act for five more years. The bill must again be extended or reauthorized this year and the AIDS Foundation is playing a leadership role in this process.
In recent years, the AIDS Foundation's Policy and Client Services Departments have worked extensively to help Medicare eligible people with HIV/AIDS understand and access their Part D Medicare Prescription Drug Benefits, as well as to advocate for federal and state governments to assure the fullest possible coverage, at no or low cost, for people entering this program.
Other current federal priorities include increasing funding to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, supporting efforts to expand care and treatment access for people living with HIV through Medicaid expansion, eliminating the ban on using federal funds to support syringe exchange programs, eliminating funding for abstinence-only programs, and lifting the immigration and travel restriction on HIV-positive people attempting to enter the U.S.
Page last updated:
4/10/2009