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Federal funding for a free HIV testing program in San Antonio will resume after silence from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) led to a temporary pause.
At the beginning of June, the Texas Department of State Health Services asked all programs funded by the CDC’s HIV Prevention and Surveillance program to pause because it hadn’t heard anything from the federal agency about whether it was going to keep paying.
"All year it's been this where they want to take funding away, and then they ... give funding back, and then they want to take it away and give funding back," said San Antonio AIDS Foundation CEO Cherise Rohr-Allegrini.
She added: "Any other year, it's not unusual for there to be some delay in getting the funds ... actually there, but you know what's coming. This year, nobody really knew if the funding was coming or not."
Allegrini heard from the state on Thursday: The CDC will pay at least until the end of the year.
The grant is supposed to run for four more years, but Allegrini is relieved to at least know this program is funded for now.
She explained that one of the program's goals is to get people onto Prep, a medication that prevents HIV infection. So if a person tests negative for HIV but is at risk of contracting the virus, the foundation can help them access the medicine. If they test positive for syphilis or another infection, staffers help them quickly begin treatment.
San Antonio is the largest hotspot in the United States for new HIV cases. It especially affects Black and Latino LGBT+ youth, which is the largest demographic on the East Side.
Thomas Evans, the lead prevention specialist and Pride on the East Side coordinator, said the East Side is impacted the most because of the social determinants.
"We sometimes do not have the ability to get health care, HIV-AIDS resources into our community," he explained. "It's something that we don't talk about also in our community as well, because we seem to earn the rub, and we don't want to talk about the stigma associated with getting tested."
The AIDS Foundation's program also offers free testing for syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia. The Alamo City recently received an unfortunate “number one” among Texas cities in a study for its rate of sexually transmitted infections.
Rohr-Allegrini said syphilis is especially concerning, particularly when someone is pregnant: "You have the risk of congenital syphilis, which can be birth defects in the child. It could be stillbirth, a lot of complications, and so we want to make sure that people with syphilis are getting identified."
