HIV community clinics are being cut off from federal direct funding next month. Two of the clinics are in Orange County, an area with one of the country’s highest rates of new diagnoses.
The loss of federal funding comes after the Trump administration decided in July that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will not renew the HIV prevention grant for “community-based organizations.” The CBO grant gave direct funding to 96 community-based clinics that work on HIV prevention throughout the country.
The funding supported testing and making prevention drugs, like PrEP, affordable. Florida has one of the highest rates of new HIV diagnoses per year in the country.
“[Community clinics] are the ones doing the work on the ground. They're the ones who are testing people, who are educating people about HIV, about prevention, about PrEP,” said Carl Schmid, the executive director of theHIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute. “They are extremely valuable to our efforts to end HIV.”
In 2024 (latest available data), there were 423 new HIV diagnoses in Orange County, according to state data. There were also over 4,400 cases newly diagnosed in the state that year. The rate of new cases is slightly lower than in 2023, but the rate has been steadily climbing since 2020.
Orange County is considered one of the “48 priority jurisdictions” in the nation due to its high rate of new HIV diagnoses, according to the CDC. As a result, the county receives $5 million dollars in funding for HIV testing and prevention, according to KFF. Florida clinics receive $26 million dollars, the second most behind Texas.
Central Florida Public Media reached out to the two clinics affected by the cuts: Hope and Health Center of Central Florida Inc. and Orange Blossom Family Health. Neither responded for comment.
The decision to end that direct funding is an about-face from the first Trump Administration’s declaration to end the HIV epidemic by 2030.
In 2019, Trump announced an ambitious goal of reducing HIV cases by 90% in 2030 through his “End the HIV Epidemic Initiative.” But the current administration is marching in the opposite direction, Schmid said.
“It's really taking a real shift in tone from the first administration, and it's become pretty nasty,” Schmid said.
Last year, the Trump administration’s proposed budget included about $800 million in cuts to HIV research and prevention funding at the CDC.
The CDC has set aside supplemental funding that will be sent to state health departments for HIV prevention until May 2027. Those departments are encouraged, but not required, to work with community clinics in administering funds.
Florida is anticipated to receive the most supplemental funding of any state or city health department, over $11 million.
The supplemental funding concerns experts like Schmid, who aren’t sure how that funding will be used to support local clinics, which will see their direct funding cut off by September.
“They're probably going to have to do a grant application process and make it a competitive grant. So that's going to take time, and people are really worried that there's going to be a lapse of funding and a lapse of services because of this,” Schmid said.
In the meantime, Schmid and other advocates are speaking with legislators hoping to reverse the decision to cut federal funding.
“We don't know what's going to happen after May,” he said. “ But hopefully… there'll be more money down the road.”
