White House to release domestic strategy against AIDS

Bloomberg BusinessWeek: "The White House is poised to release the country's first comprehensive domestic strategy against AIDS, as funds to prevent infections have failed to halt the epidemic in those most at risk of the disease, AIDS groups said. Release of the National AIDS Strategy may come as early as today, fulfilling Obama's campaign pledge to unify priorities among federal agencies and state partners, said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the New York-based AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group. HIV is contracted by about 56,000 Americans each year, and the mounting tally of people living with the disease shows no sign of stopping, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." The nation's domestic response to AIDS has evolved as "a patchwork of programs with little oversight, said Chris Collins, director of Public Policy at the American Foundation for AIDS Research" and as state governments face budget difficulties they have reduced funding for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program "just as U.S. guidelines were broadened to start treatment earlier, according to the alliance of state directors" (Randall, 6/28).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.