Community health centers today serve more than one in five people in the United States living with HIV/AIDS and receiving care for their condition. As a critical part of the HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment system, health centers will need sustained funding and additional resources to support the Trump Administration’s recent initiative to stop new HIV infections in the United States by 2030. In Medicaid non-expansion states, health centers will face an especially great challenge, given Medicaid’s role in funding health care for people with or at risk for HIV. These are the key findings from an analysis published by the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health.
The Trump Administration’s newly announced initiative calls for a significant expansion of health care, including outreach to at-risk populations, services aimed at preventing new infections, and ongoing care and treatment for people living with an HIV diagnosis. In order to strengthen HIV-related care, community health centers nationwide will need to increase prevention, treatment, and management services and remain sustainable, the researchers write.
The administration’s initiative calls for targeting high-burden states, counties, rural areas, and cities, including seven states with substantial rural HIV burden, 48 counties in 19 states, Washington, DC, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. While all community health centers will face some challenges in ramping up services, sustainable expansion will be especially difficult in the 10 high-burden states that have not adopted the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion, the authors of the analysis conclude.
In Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, thousands of low-income, at-risk people may not be covered by Medicaid, which increases the risk of inadequate care and places additional burdens on health centers to identify sources of sustainable financing to support expanded care. The analysis recommends a 10-year reauthorization of the Health Center Fund, with additional funding targeted to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment efforts, as well as expanded Medicaid coverage in the 10 high-burden, non-expansion states.
To read the analysis, “Community Health Centers and the President’s HIV Initiative: Issues and Challenges Facing Health Centers in High-Burden States and Communities,” click here.
Contact: Kathy Fackelmann
Phone: 202.994.8354
Email: kfackelmann@gwu.edu