Tennessee has reversed its decision to block $8.3 million in annual federal funds for HIV prevention, surveillance, and treatment. The state approved a new allotment of $9 million in the state budget, stunning and pleasing HIV advocates. Tennessee has one of the nation’s worst-controlled HIV epidemics. Governor Bill Lee previously singled out the Tennessee Transgender Task Force and Planned Parenthood to be defunded from the CDC’s HIV-prevention grant to the state.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on Monday that it will circumvent the state government and continue providing about $4 million in HIV-prevention funds to Tennessee nonprofit groups despite Governor Bill Lee’s objections. The remaining $2 million or so of the CDC grant has supported surveillance of HIV in Tennessee.
Blacks, Latinos, trans individuals, and people who inject drugs are particularly at risk for HIV. Tennessee has a high rate of transmission among gay and bisexual men, both in Tennessee and nationally. Jade Byers, a Lee spokesperson, said that the $9 million in new state funding would recur and allow Tennessee to provide better services and reach more at-risk populations in the state, such as victims of human trafficking, mothers and children, and first responders.
Toni Newman, a director at the HIV advocacy nonprofit NMAC, called the new state funds “a step forward.” However, the real impact of this move will be determined by how the money is distributed. Without a clear understanding of where the money is going and who it will benefit, the state risks worsening the HIV epidemic. NMAC, along with a cadre of national and state HIV organizations, has spent the past three months lobbying the CDC to ensure funding continuity.
In recent years, the CDC has granted Tennessee $6.2 million annually for HIV prevention and surveillance, delivering the money to the state Health Department. The state has then sent about $4 million of those funds to the United Way of Greater Nashville, which has distributed the cash to various community-based organizations fighting HIV throughout the state. In January, the Lee administration announced that beginning in the new fiscal year, which starts June 1, it would block all $6.2 million of the CDC HIV funding.
Dr. Richard Briggs, a surgeon and Republican state senator representing Knoxville, celebrated Tennessee’s comparatively fulsome new HIV budget. Yet he still criticized Governor Lee, also a Republican, for blocking the federal money. Friends for Life, an $8.5 million Memphis nonprofit that provides HIV prevention and treatment services, faced losing nearly $500,000 in CDC grant funding following Lee’s announcement in January. The nonprofit will now receive a windfall of $891,000 from the state, plus continued CDC funding, which will maintain its rebate eligibility.
