CDC eliminates $29 million for HIV prevention in Texas
[November 13, 2026]
By SASHA DRAEGER-MAZER/The Texas Tribune
The federal government has cut $29.2 million from Texas health
organizations that test thousands of people for HIV directly in their
communities, the latest in a series of public health funding cuts
statewide.
Texas was the nation’s largest beneficiary of PS21-2102 funding, with
grant money going to 11 community-based organizations (CBOs), mostly in
urban areas, over the last five years.
These organizations, which provide services directly in communities, are
a key pillar of the HIV prevention network because they generally enjoy
more trust than clinics and tend to be much more effective in finding
positive cases. The federal dollars helped cover the costs of HIV tests,
connect Texans to care and pay for HIV prophylaxis, which almost
completely protects from infection.
Without the grant, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
allowed to expire on Sept. 30, organizations have been left scrambling
to find new sources of funding or pare back services. The CDC did not
respond to a request for comment.
“The front line in the testing portion of it really are the
community-based organizations — they’re the ones that are in their
community,” said Philip Keiser, a professor at the University of Texas
Medical Branch who studies HIV. “These community groups are critically
important in getting out there to reach their community and get people
tested.”
Rolled out in 2021, PS21-2102 provided $239 million to community-based
organizations across the country. Its elimination comes as President
Donald Trump’s administration has launched a far-reaching offensive
targeting HIV-eradication efforts both domestically and abroad.
“From the start of this administration, we heard that HIV prevention was
… under attack,” said Philip Huang, director of Dallas County Health and
Human Services and the vice chair of the state’s Public Health Funding
and Policy Committee.
Beyond support for HIV prevention, the federal government has also
slashed public health funding to Texas more broadly, including
pandemic-era grant money going toward immunization efforts, lab capacity
and investigation of infectious disease outbreaks. Job cuts at the
federal level have wiped out both the administrative support and
technical expertise local health departments rely on, Huang said.
The uncertainty about funding has been incredibly disruptive, he said.
“It’s been chaotic, uncertain, so they’re all making our job of trying
to protect the public … much more difficult.”
Unlike other HIV-related grants, PS21-2102 channeled funding directly to
CBOs. Now, the feds are giving a one-time pot of money to state health
departments through May 2027. The CDC awarded the Texas Department of
State Health Services (DSHS) over $5.2 million.
Almost a quarter of that award, $1.2 million, will flow to CBOs, while
the rest will go to “projects that support the HIV prevention and
surveillance efforts funded through” another program, DSHS spokesperson
Lara Anton wrote in an email.
The sum is a fraction of the more than $3 million Texas CBOs had been
receiving annually from the CDC. With state health departments
encouraged, but not required, to send 10% of those funds to CBOs,
advocates worry states will prioritize testing in clinical settings at
the expense of supporting CBOs.
In Houston, Allies in Hope has been providing HIV-related care for more
than four decades. Starting in 2021, the organization received about
$441,000 annually from PS21-2102, which went to various prevention
measures, including outreach and a mobile unit, CEO William Jeffrey
Campbell explained. The grant covered more than a quarter of the 2,000
tests the organization administers yearly. Unless it can find new
sources of funding, the organization will have to reduce testing.
“That $441,000, with all that it encompasses, that takes out a good
chunk of the number of people that we are able to test,” Campbell said.
Going into the next legislative session, lawmakers have started
considering replacement funding at the state level, said state Rep.
Venton Jones, a Dallas Democrat who is the first openly HIV-positive
lawmaker to serve in the Legislature. He vowed to do everything he can
to replace the eliminated federal dollars, but warned state funding
isn’t a permanent solution.
“This is a huge hit to our ability to respond to the epidemic,” Jones
said. “Ultimately, we want to make sure that those funds are put back by
the federal government, by the CDC, because those are critical.”
“Robbing Peter to pay Paul”
Texas ranks fifth in the nation for new HIV diagnoses per capita,
according to 2024 data from AIDSVu, a mapping tool developed at Emory
University in partnership with Gilead Sciences.
While both clinics and CBOs are key parts of an effective HIV prevention
strategy, Keiser said, siphoning funding from CBOs to support clinics is
like “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
[to top of second column]
|
 People can get tested at clinics or
at their doctor’s office, but the onus typically falls on the
patient to seek out the care. In contrast, because CBOs more
directly reach vulnerable groups, for instance by setting up testing
stations at bars or nightclubs, they tend to be more “efficient” at
finding HIV-positive individuals, meaning they find more positive
cases for each test administered.
Between 2012 and 2017, CBOs diagnosed a new case of
HIV in 1.4% of CDC-funded tests, compared to only 0.5% for
CDC-funded tests administered by local health departments; that
translates to a rate of new diagnoses three times as high.
Trust also matters. In Austin, Vivent Health Vice President of
Health Center Operations Emma Sinnott said much of the
organization’s clientele may not trust clinics or worry that
visiting a clinic could out them.
“There’s a lot of stigma in the community, and they don’t want
people to know their sexuality,” Sinnott said. “Outreach allows
access, testing and meeting people where they’re at.”
Vivent Health had been using its PS21-2102 award to fund outreach
HIV testing and awareness. Sinnott said the grant money made up 30%
of the organization’s funding for HIV prevention.
Although Vivent Health, as one of the state’s larger organizations,
can better absorb the initial shock of losing the grant, the cut
will limit its capacity for outreach events and reduce access to
newer post-exposure prophylaxis medications like injectables,
Sinnott said. While the organization will try to keep testing panels
for sexually transmitted diseases free for as long as possible,
Sinnott worries it will eventually need to charge for them.
Vivent meets a particular need by focusing on the populations most
impacted by HIV and with the least access to testing, said Laura La
Fuente, assistant director of Austin Public Health, which also
provides HIV testing.
“We want to ensure that there are access points across a public
health system with various partners to ensure that individuals can
get tested and can get treatment,” La Fuente said.
“Penny wise and pound foolish”
The first Trump administration made eradicating HIV a pillar of its
public health strategy, setting an ambitious goal of ending the HIV
epidemic by 2030. In contrast, the last two years have been rough
for HIV prevention efforts.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which left Republicans
distinctly wary of the CDC, the administration has tightened the
agency’s leash, and many public health programs fell victim to the
Department of Government Efficiency’s push to slash spending across
the federal government.
In 2025, the National Institutes of Health eliminated at least $759
million in grants for HIV research. The administration has also
sought to axe or alter numerous HIV-related programs, including the
Ending the HIV Epidemic initiative, part of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS
Program and a program supporting housing for people living with
AIDS.
“The first year the Trump administration was back, they zeroed
budget proposals on HIV prevention programs,” Carl Schmid, executive
director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute, said. “We’ve been on
the defensive, and this is not where we were in the last
administration with President Trump.”
Experts emphasized that HIV prevention is economically advantageous
regardless of the administration’s ideological stance.
A single case of HIV can cost up to $1 million in treatment over a
patient’s lifetime, said Anthony Fojo, a medicine professor at Johns
Hopkins Medicine. The more positive cases are found and treated, the
fewer transmissions occur, which means running 1,000 HIV tests to
find a single positive case still saves hundreds of thousands of
dollars in the long run, he explained.
“It’s kind of penny wise and pound foolish to cut funding for
testing, because it’s a lot cheaper to test and screen things than
to treat additional infections down the road,” Fojo said.
In San Antonio, Black Efforts Against the Threat of AIDS was the
nation’s largest recipient of PS21-2102 money. Last year, the grant
covered 20% of the approximately 5,000 HIV tests the organization
administered. Now, it’s looking for alternate sources of funding:
writing more grants, educating local leaders and seeking more
support from the city.
Each year, 300 to 400 people are newly diagnosed with HIV in San
Antonio, Executive Director Michele Durham said. Reduced funding
means reduced testing capacity, translating to more people living
with HIV without knowing it and who could unwittingly pass on the
disease.
“For us to let up off the gas right now is just not our smartest
move as a community and as a nation,” Durham said.
All contents © copyright 2026 Associated Press. All rights reserved |
