Health Action AIDS

PEPFAR Reauthorized

Health Professionals Made It Happen

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), at its original price tag of $15 billion, was the single biggest AIDS program in history when it was introduced in 2002. Its reauthorization in Congress has been the most pressing policy issue in global health for the past two years.

Health professionals nationwide and in Africa joined with PHR's Health Action AIDS Campaign to make reauthorization a reality and almost triple the price of the original program to $48 billion—a huge success for people with AIDS and a major achievement for the health and human rights community.

The Health Action AIDS organizing team collaborated with health professionals and students in key states—California, Florida, Maine, Illinois, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Kansas and New York—to bring their expertise and experience to lawmakers. Doctors, nurses, public health specialists and students also signed onto PHR letters promoting best public health and human rights practices in addressing HIV/AIDS—which PHR presented on their behalf to members of Congress.

Over 400 health professionals joined PHR in opposing the US government's HIV travel ban. This reaction prompted Senator Kerry to introduce of a bill to repeal the HIV travel ban—quickly followed by a similar bill in the House. Kerry's language in his Senate bill was subsequently rolled into the PEPFAR reauthorization bill and is now law.

African doctors, nurses, and medical students spoke directly about the issues that affect them and their most pressing needs for saving lives through videos featured on PHR's YouTube channel. There were also important visits by leading AIDS physicians from Uganda and Kenya to the US to meet with policymakers and the press—to provide first-hand accounts of how PEPFAR was working on the ground, and how it might be improved.

In the critical final weeks and days of the reauthorization process, thousands of health professionals repeatedly called and wrote and met with targeted legislators to provide them with essential facts and information regarding the positive and vital impact that PEPFAR has had on saving the lives of literally millions of people at risk for or infected by HIV.

PHR's policy team wrote key documents that supported best public health- and evidence-based practices that provided the philosophical underpinnings for changes to the bill—most notably:

• boosting efforts to address Africa's health workforce shortage
• mainstreaming harm reduction for injection drug users
• lifting the HIV travel ban

PHR worked closely with important allies within the Global Health Council. We also collaborated with renowned international advocates including Lincoln Chen, MD, to develop critical costing data that helped justify tripling the price tag.

Health professional expertise was crucial for ensuring funding for 140,000 health workers was included in PEPFAR2. The Harm Reduction Working Group, which PHR chairs, provided Congressional staffers with vital evidence-based research on effective harm reduction measures for injection drug users, much of what appears in final PEPFAR legislation.

With energetic support from so many health professionals, Health Action AIDS policy demands aired in op-eds, news articles, broadcast pieces and letters to the editor. Together we changed the course of the reauthorization process, mainstreamed the budget increase, and thanks to one particularly influential column in The Washington Post, literally re-started the reauthorization process after it had stalled for months.