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# Thanks To CDC Cutbacks, 13 Texas Nonprofits Lose Millions In HIV Outreach Funding
- URL: https://www.thebarbedwire.com/cdc-cutbacks-13-texas-nonprofits-lose-millions-in-hiv-outreach-funding/
- Published: 2026-09-22T13:29:08.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-22T13:29:08.000Z
- Description: Gulf Coast is hardest hit: The CEO of a Houston-area nonprofit estimated that six organizations in the area are losing a total of about $2 million in funds.
- Author: Kit O'Connell
- Tags: Queer Texas, Culture, Health

On the way into the nightclub, you notice a friendly face beckoning you from a table set up in front of a nonprofit’s testing van, along with some cute stickers, key chains, and other free swag to lure you in. And the offer they make is risk free. *Why not?* you think, *it's been a while since I checked my HIV status.*

Services like these are at risk nationwide. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is dismantling a vital program that nonprofits across the country use to fund HIV prevention outreach and education, affecting at least 13 organizations here in Texas. Without these funds, it will become harder for these nonprofits to reach people in vulnerable populations where they gather – at clubs, pride marches, barber shops, and community events – when they might not otherwise come into a clinic or request testing for sexually-transmitted infections from their normal medical provider. 

The program, called [PS21-2102](https://restoredcdc.org/www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/media/pdfs/2024/08/cdc-hiv-ps21-2102-preapp-ta-webinars.pdf?ref=thebarbedwire.com), or “Comprehensive High-Impact HIV Prevention Programs for Community-Based Organizations,” began in 2021 and was originally scheduled to end in July, before getting an extension until September. According to our interviews, CDC officials have promised to redirect these funds to state health programs, but administrators at the affected organizations say it will be difficult if not impossible to reproduce the infrastructure that allows them to target affected communities directly — which they’ve spent years (and in some cases, decades) building. 

The CDC did not respond to requests for comment from *The Barbed Wire*. 

The cuts come even as the reduction in new HIV diagnosis has stalled, with an estimated 38,000 newly diagnosed Americans per year, [according to U.S. government figures](https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/statistics?ref=thebarbedwire.com). It’s estimated that 1.2 million people in the U.S. are living with HIV, and about 13% of them are unaware of their status. Both Black and Latino populations are disproportionately affected.

[Michele Durham](https://beataids.org/about/staff/michele-durham-2/?ref=thebarbedwire.com), executive director at [Beat AIDS](https://beataids.org/?ref=thebarbedwire.com) in San Antonio, told us that funding cuts like these make it harder to believe that we will end the HIV epidemic. The CDC program allowed Beat AIDS to hire queer people who worked directly in their community, were from the populations that they served, and are among the most vulnerable to HIV. “These workers were able to speak the same language and walk the same walk as the individuals they’re reaching out to for tests and PrEP, and be an example of what safe and happy sexual health looks like.”

Altogether, according to a list provided by [Vivent Health](https://viventhealth.org/?ref=thebarbedwire.com), the Texas nonprofits losing access to the funds cover a wide swath of the eastern part of the state, all the way from the [Valley AIDS Council](https://www.valleyaids.org/?ref=thebarbedwire.com) in the Rio Grande Valley, north to [Special Health Resources for Texas](https://www.specialhealth.org/?ref=thebarbedwire.com) in Texarkana. The Houston area, where a total of six nonprofits are affected, is especially hard hit. [Jeffrey Campbell,](https://www.aihhouston.org/work?ref=thebarbedwire.com#AboutUs) chief executive officer at [Allies in Hope Houston](https://www.aihhouston.org/?ref=thebarbedwire.com), told us his organization would lose $450,000 in annual funding when the program ends. Based on conversations with other organizations in his city, he estimated that a total of $2 million will be lost across all of the Gulf Coast-area nonprofits. 

“It allowed us to be able to do very focused HIV and STI testing in communities that have some of the highest rates of HIV prevalence,” Campbell said. 

At Vivent Health, the funds paid for over 1,000 HIV tests in Central Texas over the past two years; during that time, nearly one-third of all HIV cases identified by the organization came as a result of these tests. In addition, these funds didn't simply facilitate testing, but allowed the organizations to be extremely agile as well. In the event of a positive result on a HIV or other STI test, many nonprofits can make a same-day referral to treatment. 

[Emma Sinnott](https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmaksinnott/?ref=thebarbedwire.com), vice president of health center operations for Vivent Health in Austin, gave one recent example where an individual tested positive for HIV during outreach at a site where unhoused people gather. Since Vivent Health’s clinic in Austin features a pharmacy, the team were able to get the individual into treatment within the hour.

“We were able to get that individual into an Uber … to the clinic,” she told *The Barbed Wire.* “So we were immediately able to link that person to a case manager, immediately link them to the clinician, immediately link them to medication.”

Others clients leave their encounter with an outreach team with the peace of mind of knowing their status, and potentially a referral to other protections like pre-exposure prophylaxis medications (PrEP), which can often be accessed inexpensively or free of charge. Taken properly, PrEP makes it almost impossible to contract HIV, while a modern viral suppressant regimen makes it almost impossible for an HIV-positive person to transmit that illness to others. 

These advances in treatment, prevention, and the overall reduction of stigma, have transformed the services that AIDS-related nonprofits provide. Campbell said Allies in Hope, which was founded 44 years ago as AIDS Foundation Houston, and is the oldest AIDS-related nonprofit in the state, originally primarily provided hospice care. “When we started in 1982, really the work was to ensure that people who had an HIV diagnosis had a dignified death and that they had food while they were waiting to die.”

Today Allies In Hope still offers help with housing and food, but also helps people living long lives with HIV meet new challenges, such as paying for medication. They also created [Camp Hope](https://www.aihhouston.org/contact%5Fus?ref=thebarbedwire.com#YouthPrograms), an annual summer camp for children with HIV or who have HIV-positive family members. 

“Yes, it is treatable, but … we have to do our best work to prevent it because preventing an HIV transmission is much less expensive than treating an HIV diagnosis,” Campbell said.

Sinnott at Vivent Health said CDC officials are promising to redirect the funds from the program to state health programs but she, like others we interviewed, doubted they could do as effective a job of reaching vulnerable populations. “No one is successful by themselves, so the state health department, the city health department, the community-based organizations have to work together to be able to make a meaningful difference.”

The cuts have left the affected nonprofits scrambling for new funding sources, or leaning harder on existing funds that may already be allocated elsewhere. Sinnott said this means HIV-prevention organizations are left to gamble on where and when to use their dwindling outreach dollars. “What that might mean is we're not able to go to as many events, we're not able to do as much targeted outreach with populations that we know are most at risk and most vulnerable.” 

With the state legislature returning to the capitol next year, there is some hope for a legislative fix for these lost outreach dollars, or other statewide policy changes that could reduce the spread of HIV. In addition to simply directing funds toward community-based organizations, the state could also mandate more HIV testing in general. During our interviews, both Sinnott and Campbell suggested that the more often HIV testing becomes routine whenever a person has a blood draw, the easier it is to detect new cases and prevent transmission. State Representative Venton Jones, [a Dallas-area representative](https://dallasvoice.com/state-rep-venton-jones-gregory-scott-jr-are-married/?ref=thebarbedwire.com) who is [openly HIV positive](https://dallasvoice.com/texas-public-health-committee-holds-hearing-on-hiv-testing-bill/?ref=thebarbedwire.com) and vice-chair of the state’s LGBTQ Caucus, has been a past supporter of a bill to make HIV testing an opt-out part of more blood draws. 

“Most people are not going to say no” when offered an HIV test in a clinical setting, Campbell said. 

However, he added that city governments have a role to play in keeping their populations safer, too. 

“Houston … does not have a line item in \[its budget\] for HIV prevention that goes to the community-based organizations, unlike San Francisco, New York, Chicago \[where\] their city leadership has been very intentional about having money in their line item budget that goes out to community,” Campbell said. “I do believe that that's one of the reasons where those cities are able to get the epidemic under some level of control.”

Campbell blamed the end of the CDC’s PS21-2102 program on ongoing DOGE-like cuts from the federal [Office of Management and Budget](https://prospect.org/2026/02/05/doge-russell-vought-elon-musk-office-management-budget/?ref=thebarbedwire.com). Alongside countless other cuts to public health resources, it’s left nonprofits competing against one another for a piece of the shrinking public health pie. 

“If you blink an eye in this day and time, you wake up the next morning and that resource has been jeopardized,” he said. 

And Sinnott acknowledged that the overall anti-LGBTQ+ atmosphere created by Republicans’ relentless attacks on LGBTQ+ civil rights makes their work harder, especially as people flee back into the closet and misinformation spreads. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, has even supported the long debunked myth [that HIV and AIDS are unrelated](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/aids-denialism-joe-rogan-bret-weinstein-rfk/?ref=thebarbedwire.com). 

“My staff are largely members of the population that we serve, and so there are days that are incredibly rough,” Sinnott told us. “I have to say they're amazing and incredibly resilient, but also it's hard when you hear all this rhetoric in the community at large, and you come in and you have to put on a brave face.”

She added, “I'm very proud of them but, at the same time, I would not wish that on anybody.”

Sinnott concluded that although HIV prevention workers are trying to remain hopeful, it’s hard not to worry about lost progress under the current administration. 

“I might have a bit of a Pollyanna view of how things should be working, but that's born out of seeing some great successes that we've had,” she said. “And I've known people that have worked in Texas with HIV prevention since the early days, and going to meetings now is so heartbreaking because this is 40 years of their life, and we’re taking us back decades.” 

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