STATE BUDGET CUTS INCLUDE HIV/AIDS PROGRAMS

State Department of Health budget cuts for the fiscal year ending
June 30 include money for several HIV/AIDS programs.

About $40,000 is being cut from Gregory House Programs, Hawaii's only
statewide HIV/AIDS housing provider; $110,000 from two Life
Foundation prevention contracts; and $157,000 for the Community
Health Outreach Work Project to Prevent AIDS.

The position of HIV/STD prevention coordinator, held 19 years by
Nancy Kern, also is being eliminated and she is moving to another
Health Department branch.

Health Department Deputy Director Susan Jackson said, "We know these
are very important services, but we have to look at state-funded
contracts and state-funded positions" to cut costs because of
declining tax revenues and the state's deficit situation.

Most HIV programs in the STD/HIV Division are federally supported,
"which is good," she said. "We regret that we have to make these
kinds of cuts and we've had to do this across the board in the department."

Jon Berliner, executive director of Gregory House Programs, decried
the cuts to his program last week at a World AIDS Day ceremony
Tuesday night at St. Clement's Church. Berliner received the Suzanne
Richmond-Crum Award from the Health Department's STD/AIDS Prevention
Branch for outstanding contributions to HIV/AIDS services in the community.

In accepting the award, Berliner noted the theme for this year's
World AIDS Day addressed the need to protect human rights and "make
HIV prevention, treatment, care, housing and support accessible to
all persons with HIV."

"We have failed on this here in Hawaii," he said, saying that a
Health Department official called him two weeks ago to say his
program's budget was being cut by more than $40,000 effective
immediately. "That means people will become homeless," Berliner said.

Berliner said the cut represents 10 percent of the organization's
annual state funding of $400,000. He said he had to lay off a housing
case worker and that the program's state-funded rent subsidy program
will be affected.

"It's going to have a serious impact on the people we serve, and
there are going to be people homeless with lack of access to health
care and the ability to take medications is going to be very much
challenged without a roof over their head."

Paul Groesbeck, executive director of Life Foundation, said the
Health Department told him it is cutting $110,000 both this year and
next from contracts for HIV prevention outreach to women at risk and
transgender people.

"While that is disappointing, everybody's in the same boat in this
state now as far as I can tell," Groesbeck said in an interview. He
said he will have to lay off two outreach workers.

Michael Johnson, the new director of the Community Health Outreach
Work Project, said, "We're trying to make the best of a bad situation."

Needle exchange is one of the primary functions of the $950,000
program, but it also does referrals, provides payments for treatment
for injecting drug users, hepatitis and HIV/AIDS testing, counseling
and referral, Johnson said.