NEEDLE PROGRAM MAY KEEP FUNDS

Opposition To Cuts Appears To Persuade Health Board

Halona Donaghy is the kind of woman a heroin user can relate to.

"I have used drugs in every major city in the United States and Canada,"
she told the Boulder County Board of Health at a study session Monday. "I
never found a place that made me feel important until I moved here."

For six years, Donaghy has volunteered for the Boulder County needle
exchange program, getting drug users clean needles and telling them how to
get tested for disease.

She and almost 20 other volunteers, disease prevention workers and
concerned residents gathered at the health department to protest a proposal
to cut all three of the program's outreach workers.

It worked.

"Find another way," board member Bill Marine told county Health Department
Director Chuck Stout.

Stout had proposed laying off all three needle exchange outreach workers as
part of an effort to cut $437,000 from the department's budget.

The health board has until its July 8 meeting to decide how to respond to
Gov. Bill Owens' line-item veto of $46 million from next year's $13.8
billion state budget. In all, Stout's proposal would have met the new
budget by cutting 14 positions, resulting in as many as six layoffs.

Stout proposed retaining only the needle exchange program's manager and
leaving it with a $50,000 operating budget.

The $100,000 annual cost-saving measure, according to Marine, would have
put the program "on life support."

The board directed Stout to return on July 8 with a proposal that perhaps
uses department reserves to keep the program running with at least one
outreach worker until a better long-term solution can be found. The board
gave its support for the other layoffs and staff shuffling that Stout
proposed for the department.

Since 1989, many say, "the Works" needle exchange program has become a
poster child for effective AIDS and Hepatitis C prevention and education
for the country. It has done that by forging a relationship with Boulder
County's 1,000 injection drug users - a population constantly on the move.

"Do not lose contact with this population, period, because you will lose
them and will not find them," said Paul Simons, former director of a Denver
outreach program for injection drug users.

News of the proposed layoffs spread from coast to coast over the weekend,
and experts in the field responded.

Marine received e-mails bemoaning the proposal from the Institute for AIDS
Research in New York, the director of Urban Health Studies at the
University of California at San Francisco, a Boulder behavioral scientist
working in Denver for the Center for Disease Control and the director of
the Harm Reduction Coalition in New York City.

The Board of Health generally approved of the other proposed layoffs and
staff re-assignments. The other recommendations were the following:

Lay off one half-time behavioral health administrative coordinator, a
3/4-time immunization clerk, a half-time tuberculosis outreach worker, and
a half-time early periodic screening diagnosis and treatment outreach worker.

Eliminate the position of health planning and epidemiology coordinator,
vacated last week by Dennis Lenaway. Also eliminate the environmental
health specialist position, which was vacated earlier this year.

Reduce the on-call immunization nursing staff.

Redirect some portion of work to bioterrorism preparedness from positions
of health planning and epidemiology program support, communicable disease
control/occupational health nurse, on-call immunization nursing staff, and
communicable disease control specialist.

The Board of Health will take a final vote on the budget cuts July 8. After
that, the Board of County Commissioners will consider every department's
cuts in the county for approval.