­Unprecedented Cuts Across Health and Human Services Put Lives in Peril

More than one million people living with HIV in the U.S. rely on services that can only be provided by a fully funded HIV response

New York, NY, April 3, 2025 — amfAR is gravely concerned by budget and staffing cuts that will significantly weaken the United States’ domestic and global response to the HIV epidemic. Investments in HIV prevention, which increased during President Trump’s first term with the creation of the Ending the HIV Epidemic Initiative, have resulted in a decrease in new HIV infections. Reductions across the Department of Health and Human Services will erode all the major progress that has been made since 2019 and significantly undermine decades of bipartisan progress and risk reversing hard-won gains in HIV prevention, treatment, and research.

Grant cancellations at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) threaten to curtail innovation, slowing development of new treatments not only for HIV, but for a range of other diseases as well. Staffing reductions at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will delay the approval of life-saving interventions. And cuts to HIV prevention and surveillance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will severely hinder the ability of public health professionals to monitor and control the spread of HIV in the U.S.

The U.S. response to HIV has long been a collaborative effort–uniting researchers, health care professionals, advocates, community organizations, government partners, Republicans and Democrats. All are essential to achieving our shared goal: to end the HIV epidemic. Weakening or eliminating one part of this partnership endangers the entire effort.

amfAR and other analyses show the potential consequences of these cuts:

• Up to 75,000 additional HIV infections and 7,500 AIDS-related deaths by 2030 if CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention is cut by 50%
• As many as 143,000 new infections and 15,000 deaths with a full elimination of that division
• Added treatment costs of $31.6 billion with a 50% cut, or $60.3 billion with a full cut
• A loss of $2.46 in economic return from every $1 removed from NIH research funding

amfAR urges the Administration to reconsider these cuts and sustain critical investments in the agencies that are central to our national HIV response. We also call on Congress to protect this essential work. The opportunity to end the HIV epidemic is within reach, but only if we continue to support the systems and science that have brought us this far.

About amfAR
amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, is one of the world’s leading nonprofit organizations dedicated to the support of AIDS research, HIV prevention, treatment education, and advocacy. Since 1985, amfAR raised nearly $900 million in support of its programs and has awarded more than 3,800 grants to research teams worldwide. Learn more at www.amfAR.org.

Media Contact:
Robert Kessler, Program Communications Manager
(212) 806-1602
robert.kessler@amfar.org

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