As part of President Donald Trump’s larger campaign to eradicate diversity, equality, and inclusion measures throughout the federal government, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is removing a large portion of HIV-related content off its website on Friday.
The main HIV page of the CDC has been restored after a brief outage. According to one federal employee, the CDC started eliminating any gender identity-related content on Friday. It seems that pages pertaining to HIV were included in that activity.
In a memo obtained by NBC News, Charles Ezell, the acting director of the U.S. office of personnel management, sent CDC employees an email on January 29 titled “Defending Women,” which stated that they were to recognize only two sexes, male and female, and not make references to or promote gender ideology—a term frequently used by conservative groups to describe what they consider woke views on sex and gender.
According to the staffer, employees first found it difficult to apply the new regulation, which had a Friday PM deadline. Finally, in an effort to make the deadline, agency employees started removing a lot of HIV-related websites, regardless of whether they mentioned gender. When the pages might be restored was unknown.
The government agency employee, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for potential consequences, stated that the procedure is in progress. We simply must remove all of the gender-related content from HIV in order to make the deadline.
Requests for response were not immediately answered by the White House. Requests for response from communications staff in the CDC’s HIV and STD prevention units were not answered; the Trump administration last week directed all HHS workers, including the CDC, to cease engaging with outside parties.
According to public health experts, the CDC’s efforts to combat HIV among Black, Latino, and transgender people—groups disproportionately impacted by the virus—may be undermined by Trump’s executive order to eliminate DEI programs across the federal government.
According to the executive order, which Trump signed last week, the United States government would only recognize two sexes—male and female—and stop what it calls wasteful and radical DEI funding. Additionally, it mandates that the government refer to sex rather than gender.
Since tackling inequities based on race, sex, or gender identity is essential to HIV prevention work, health experts believe that the Trump administration’s broad directions threaten to undermine the CDC’s HIV prevention division. Blacks, Latinos, gay and bisexual men, and transgender individuals are among the minority populations that have traditionally been disproportionately affected by the virus.
For instance, the CDC’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD and Tuberculosis Prevention, of which the HIV department is a branch, has removed a page discussing workplace diversity.
By Friday afternoon, in addition to the main HIV page, there were no longer any HIV pages on deaths and diagnoses in the United States, a hub for HIV data, resources for health care providers, pages on racial disparities, another on transgender people, gay and bisexual men, information about ongoing youth risk behaviors, and details about the federal Ending the HIV Epidemic plan that Trump endorsed in his 2019 State of the Union address.
Separately, a website that offers training materials and technical support to organizations and clinics that receive funding from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program—which is administered by HHS and offers safety-net funding for the treatment and care of low-income individuals living with HIV—was taken down this week and replaced with a notice stating that it is undergoing maintenance.
According to an archival version of the website, it was defunct by January 29 and active as recently as January 24.
If we are unable to discuss HIV, how can we attempt to avoid it among the those most at risk? The government employee said. This effectively closes down our entire agency. We’re frantically trying to decide what to do.
According to an NBC News analysis, the administration has removed dozens of webpages from federal health agencies’ websites, including the National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration, CDC, and Department of Human and Health Services, that discuss diversity, equity, inclusion, gender, or sexuality since Trump took office.
Among the websites that have gone offline is Reproductiverights.gov, the HHS website that offered information on access to reproductive care, including abortion, in the United States. The NIH’s Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion website now reroutes to an equal employment opportunity page, and the FDA’s Office of Minority Health and Health Equity website has also been cleaned up.
In response to the developing AIDS epidemic, the CDC established its HIV prevention section in the early 1980s.
The agency is in charge of monitoring HIV infections throughout the United States, carrying out research—sometimes in collaboration with outside organizations—that informs efforts to prevent HIV transmission, and initiating campaigns to encourage testing and prevention, including the use of PrEP, the HIV prevention drug.
The CDC gives millions of dollars in funding to state and local health departments and organizations to carry out a large portion of the on-the-ground activities to monitor and fight the virus, emphasizing local management of HIV prevention programs.
The NIH provides the majority of federal funding for HIV research, including experimental vaccines, treatments, and curative technologies. As the Trump administration continues to exercise its influence over the country’s health authorities, it is unclear if such funding is in jeopardy.
However, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice to head HHS, has stated that he wants to put an eight-year halt on research on infectious diseases in order to focus on chronic illnesses like diabetes and obesity.
Despite being an infectious disease, HIV is now regarded as a chronic illness because of the effectiveness of antiretroviral therapy, which has increased the life expectancy of those taking it to a normal level. Individuals who have the virus are more likely to develop diabetes and cardiovascular disease, among other aging-related chronic illnesses. The NIH has spent a lot of money looking for ways to reduce these interconnected health hazards.
According to the CDC, the yearly HIV transmission rate peaked in the mid-1980s at an estimated 135,000 infections annually and then leveled out at roughly 50,000 cases in the 1990s and 2000s. HIV has slightly decreased in recent years as PrEP has gained traction, including a 12% decrease from 2018 to 2022 to an expected 31,800 new cases. However, these advancements are insignificant when compared to the sharp recent declines observed in numerous other affluent Western countries.
Despite making up only 12% and 18% of the U.S. population, respectively, Blacks and Latinos accounted for 37% and 33% of new HIV diagnoses in 2022, the most recent year for which precise data are available.
Gay and bisexual men, who make up only 2% of the adult population, account for about two-thirds of new cases. The CDC’s regular HIV surveillance reports do not segment the data by gender identification, despite evidence showing that transgender women in particular have a high HIV rate.
Concerns were raised by HIV advocates that the Trump administration’s anti-DEI initiatives will hinder CDC’s HIV work and endanger hard-won victories.
An HIV prevention policy that fails to customize programs, services, and outreach to the most vulnerable areas may worsen stigma, make engagements and outreach more difficult, and undermine trust. In an email, Lindsey Dawson, associate director of KFF, a nonprofit organization that focuses on health policy, wrote.
Since the beginning of the epidemic, politics and HIV prevention and activism have clashed.
President Ronald Reagan came under fire from activists in the 1980s for his administration’s tardiness in responding to the growing AIDS epidemic that was wreaking havoc on the LGBT community.
The Helms Amendment, also mockingly referred to as the No Promo Homo law, was passed by Congress in 1987 and forbade the CDC from producing HIV education materials or programs that would support, encourage, or condone homosexual behavior.
During George W. Bush’s presidency, researchers and groups applying for federal grant funding for HIV-related issues were required to refrain from mentioning homosexual people or condoms, according to Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute.
However, according to experts in HIV prevention, the harsh effects of Trump’s anti-DEI order seem to be unique.
According to Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Southern California and an experienced combatant of HIV, the government is targeting numerous initiatives that assist underprivileged populations in the United States. Regarding HIV prevention in the US, I am quite concerned. In the United States, we have achieved great success because to the hard work and dedication of NIH and CDC scientists who later sold and implemented their findings in the private sector.
The government worker described Trump’s directive as discouraging.