Nashville CARES CEO Amna Osman
Tennessee state leaders in January became the first in the country to reject federal HIV/AIDS prevention money, a decision that put funding for Nashville CARES and other local organizations at risk. It was the start of a tumultuous year for Nashville CARES.
“Over the course of the last decade, we’ve never had this significant of a reduction or problems with funding,” Amna Osman, executive director of Nashville CARES, tells Scene sister publication the Nashville Post.
In January, the Tennessee Department of Health turned down $8 million in federal HIV prevention funding through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A Department of Health representative told media at the time that “it is in the best interest of Tennesseans for the state to assume direct financial and managerial response for these services.” CARES lost $315,000, or 45 percent of its annual prevention dollars.
The changes in the state’s HIV prevention program took effect May 31. Gov. Bill Lee and lawmakers promised replacement funds for the $8 million and ultimately allocated $4.5 million in state funding to be directed toward HIV prevention, aimed at first responders, mothers, children and victims of human trafficking, leaving out explicit mentions of the populations most affected by the HIV crisis: people of color and men who have sex with men.
In addition, the CDC rerouted $4 million in HIV prevention funding to United Way of Greater Nashville. Nashville CARES was one of the six organizations that received a piece of Lee’s replacement funding — $600,000, which Nashville CARES shares with other Middle Tennessee providers. In June, that funding will expire. Osman says the organization has received $172,000 from the CDC redirection, too.
“The important thing to highlight is that the legislators, while they appropriated this money, they only appropriated it for one year,” Osman says. “CDC funding was a five-year cycle. We have to go back now again next year to ensure that these funds continue to be funded at that same level, if not more, for future years.”
Meanwhile, Nashville CARES put a mobile clinic on the streets this year, and introduced syringe exchange services.
Midyear, the organization announced its clinic at Metroplex Drive would close and it would renovate its Thompson Lane location so the clinic and pharmacy can move there. Osman says the goal is to consolidate services at one location, slated for completion in summer 2024. The organization is still offering services at its Metroplex Drive location for the time being.
“Anybody that accesses our services will be able to do that in a one-stop shop, under one roof,” Osman says. “That really reduces barriers to accessing services and being retained in care. That is an ultimate focus and goal for Nashville CARES in the next year.”
In July, CARES contested the state’s decision not to award it Ryan White Insurance Assistance Program funding, which it had received from the state since 2001. The litigation is ongoing, and Osman declined to comment on the matter.
Osman fears additional federal cuts will shrink funding coming to the state over time.
At the federal level, The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has been contested by a small group of conservative U.S. House Republicans who accuse the Biden administration of using it to promote abortion. Osman fears this rhetoric will affect funding further in 2024.
“It’s contradicting because we have a national HIV/AIDS strategy that says, if we do all these efforts throughout the United States, we will start to see a significant reduction in the HIV epidemic,” Osman says. “With funding being eliminated and threatened, all these efforts will have to either stop in some programs and areas and others, it'll be a challenge to have adequate funding to comprehensively address the HIV epidemic. Funding is seriously being threatened at all levels — at the federal level and at the state level.”
This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.
