The House Appropriations Committee recently gave the go-ahead on a Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations funding bill for fiscal year 2018, thus allowing money to continue to go toward many programs aimed at fighting HIV and hepatitis.
However, the bill will not keep some initiatives for fighting HIV and AIDS, one of those being the Minority AIDS Initiative, an AIDS Institute release said. Despite that, the House committee suggested that the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, CDC HIV, hepatitis and STD Prevention, as well as HUD’s Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS (HOPWA) initiatives get the same amount of money in 2018 that they get in 2017.
U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) proposed a change to the bill that would keep money going to the Minority AIDS Initiative and other causes that look out for the well-being of minorities, but the committee shut that down on a 23-29 vote, the release said.
The committee also decided to get rid of the Teen Pregnancy and Prevention Program and Title X Family Planning and to give more money to initiatives that promote abstinence before marriage. The committee also decided to increase the amount of money it would give to the National Institutes of Health for research by $1.1 billion.
“The AIDS Institute thanks the leadership of the House Appropriations Committee for
continuing to fund many domestic HIV programs, especially after President (Donald ) Trump
proposed cutting them by almost $1 billion,” Carl Schmid, deputy executive
director of the AIDS Institute, said in the release.
