The President’s Budget provides a roadmap for accelerating economic growth, expanding opportunity for all Americans, and ensuring fiscal responsibility. It invests in infrastructure, job training, preschool, and pro-work tax cuts, while reducing deficits through health, tax, and immigration reform.
Post date: Apr 9, 2015 7:25:32 PM
The President’s Budget provides a roadmap for accelerating economic growth, expanding opportunity for all Americans, and ensuring fiscal responsibility. It invests in infrastructure, job training, preschool, and pro-work tax cuts, while reducing deficits through health, tax, and immigration reform.
According to the White House, the budget supports and expands opportunity for the LGBT community by:
Expanding Access to Health Coverage.
The Affordable Care Act ensures that Americans have secure, stable, and affordable insurance. As of January Insurance companies are no longer able to discriminate against consumers due to pre-existing conditions, and because of the law, insurers can no longer turn someone away just because he or she is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.
Addressing Health Care Disparities.
The Budget supports community effort to focus on prevention, including using evidence-based interventions to address tobacco control, obesity prevention, and better nutrition and physical activity. The Budget also invests in expanding the health care workforce, as well as investing in community health centers to provide primary care services in communities across the country. And continuing efforts to improve data collection on health disparities will help policymakers have the knowledge and tools they need to continue to address the health needs and concerns of the LGBT community.
Continuing Progress Toward Ending Homelessness.
The Budget provides $2.4 billion for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Homeless Assistance Grants, $301 million above the 2014 enacted level. This funding supports new permanent supportive housing units and maintains over 330,000 HUD-funded beds that assist the homeless Nationwide. Through this investment as well as collaborative partnerships with local governments, non-profit organizations, and among Federal agencies, the Administration will continue to make progress towards the President's ambitious goals to end homelessness across the country. To advance the goal of ending youth homelessness by 2020, Federal agencies have partnered to develop and promote a research-informed framework that focuses on improving data quality and improving service capacity to support highly vulnerable homeless youth, including LGBTQ youth, youth involved in the foster care or juvenile justice systems, and pregnant and parenting youth.
Expanding Access to HIV/AIDS Treatment, Care, and Prevention.
The Budget expands access to HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment activities and supports the goals of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and HIV Care Continuum Initiative to reduce HIV incidence, increase access to care, and reduce HIV-related health disparities. The Budget invests $2.3 billion in the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program to provide treatment and care completion services for people living with HIV, which includes $900 million for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program to ensure that people living with HIV have access to life-saving antiretroviral medications. The Budget also invests $1.1 billion for CDC HIV/AIDS, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Tuberculosis, and Viral Hepatitis activities, and aligns HIV funding with the epidemic by requiring public health departments to target resources where the epidemic is most concentrated.
Supporting Housing Assistance for People Living with HIV/AIDS.
The Budget provides $332 million for HUD’s Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program to address housing needs among people living with HIV/AIDS and their families. The program provides States and localities with the resources to create comprehensive strategies for providing housing assistance that gives patients the stability needed for effective treatment. In partnership with Federal agencies through the HIV Care Continuum, HUD is working to improve outcomes that promote greater achievements in viral suppression through the coordination and alignment of housing support with medical care.
Employ evidence-based strategies to create demand for, and utilization of, male and female condoms, such as ensuring that high-quality condoms are available, that offered condoms correspond to consumer preferences, and that a variety of price points for different distribution channels are used.
The GOMOJO Capacity Building program exists to fill the gaps in condom distribution, address health and poverty disparities within high-prevalent communities by providing technical assistance through skills-building learning to: civic groups, organizations, foundations, corporations, public-policy makers, churches, universities, colleges or non-profit organizations. Trainings can be offered in a variety of forms and formats. These include: webinars, phone consultations, face-to-face trainings, and conferences.
(b) conduct basic behavioral and social science research that is needed to advance the development of innovative interventions,
and (c) translate and operationalize the findings from these basic studies to develop interventions and assess their feasibility.
• Educate all Americans about the threat of HIV and how to prevent it
Anticipated Results:
• By 2015, lower the annual number of new infections by 25% (from 56,300 to 42,225).
• Reduce the HIV transmission rate, which is a measure of annual transmissions in relation to the number of people living with HIV, by 30% (from 5 persons infected per 100 people with HIV to 3.5 persons infected per 100 people with HIV).
• By 2015, increase from 79% to 90% the percentage of people living with HIV who know their serostatus (from 948,000 to
1,080,000 people).
Increasing Access to Care and Improving Health Outcomes for People Living with HIV
Action Steps:
• Establish a seamless system to immediately link people to continuous and coordinated quality care when they are diagnosed with HIV.
• Take deliberate steps to increase the number and diversity of available providers of clinical care and related services for people living with HIV.
• Support people living with HIV with co-occurring health conditions and those who have challenges meeting their basic needs, such as housing.
Anticipated Results:
• By 2015, increase the proportion of newly diagnosed patients linked to clinical care within three months of their HIV
diagnosis from 65% to 85% (from 26,824 to 35,078 people).
• By 2015,increase the proportion of Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program clients who are in care (at least 2 visits for routine HIV
medical care in 12 months at least 3 months apart) from 73% to 80% (or 237,924 people in continuous care to 260,739
people in continuous care).
• By 2015, increase the number of Ryan White clients with permanent housing from 82% to 86% (from 434,000 to 455,800 people). (This serves as a measurable proxy of our efforts to expand access to HUD and other housing supports to all needy people living with HIV).
Reducing HIV-Related Health Disparities and Health Inequities
Action Steps:
• Reduce HIV-related mortality in communities at high risk for HIV infection.
• Adopt community-level approaches to reduce HIV infection in high-risk communities.
• Reduce stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV.
Anticipated Results:
• By 2015, increase the proportion of HIV diagnosed gay and bisexual men with undetectable viral load by 20%.
• By 2015, increase the proportion of HIV diagnosed Black Americans with undetectable viral load by 20%.
• By 2015, increase the proportion of HIV diagnosed Latinos with undetectable viral load by 20%.
Achieving a More Coordinated National Response to the HIV Epidemic in the United States
• Increase the coordination of HIV programs across the Federal government and between federal agencies and state, territorial, tribal, and local governments.
Fact Sheet: Shared OPWA currently supports housing for over 61,614 households