Six people have resigned from the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. Scott Schoettes, Lucy Bradley-Springer, Gina Brown, Ulysses Burley III, Michelle Ogle and Grissel Granados publicly announced their resignation in an open letter that appeared in Newsweek. The title of their resignation letter? “TRUMP DOESN’T CARE ABOUT HIV. WE’RE OUTTA HERE”
The substance of their letter is unmistakable, President Trump does not care about the HIV/AIDS epidemic and is pursuing public policy objectives that harm gains that have been made in the past.
Members of the advisory council feel they will be more effective fight HIV as critics of the administration than as members of it.
The public letter made a number of interesting points:
- HIV, once considered a disease that afflicted urban populations, has become increasingly a rural disease due to poor public health infrastructure, particularly in the Southern United States.
- There is no strategy to deal with this shift in the epidemic. (see portion of letter below)
- African-American men who have sex with other African-American men are the worst hit by the epidemic, particularly in the Southern United States.
“Five of my colleagues and I resigned this week from the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA).
As advocates for people living with HIV, we have dedicated our lives to combating this disease and no longer feel we can do so effectively within the confines of an advisory body to a president who simply does not care.
The Trump Administration has no strategy to address the on-going HIV/AIDS epidemic, seeks zero input from experts to formulate HIV policy, and—most concerning—pushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease.
…President Trump took down the Office of National AIDS Policy website the day he took office and there has been no replacement for this website 132 days into his administration.
More important, President Trump has not appointed anyone to lead the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, a post that held a seat on the Domestic Policy Council under President Obama. This means no one is tasked with regularly bringing salient issues regarding this ongoing public health crisis to the attention of the President and his closest advisers.
Because we do not believe the Trump Administration is listening to—or cares—about the communities we serve as members of PACHA, we have decided it is time to step down.”
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