JACKSON, Miss. — Storm clouds hung low above a community center in Jackson, where pastor Andre Devine invited people inside for lunch. Hoagies with smoked turkey and ham drew the crowd, but several people lingered for free preventive health care: tests for HIV and other diseases, flu shots, and blood pressure and glucose monitoring.
Between greetings, Devine, executive director of the nonprofit group Hearts for the Homeless, commiserated with his colleagues about the hundreds of thousands of dollars their groups had lost within a couple of weeks, swept up in the Trump administration’s termination of research dollars and clawback of more than $11 billion from health departments across the country.
Devine would have to scale back food distribution for people in need. And his colleagues at the nonprofit health care group My Brother’s Keeper were worried they’d have to shutter the group’s mobile clinic — an RV offering HIV tests, parked beside the community center that morning. Several employees had already been furloughed and the cuts kept coming, said June Gipson, CEO of My Brother’s Keeper.
“People can’t work without being paid,” she said.
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The directors of other community-based groups in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee told KFF Health News they too had reduced their spending on HIV testing and outreach because of delayed or slashed federal funds — or they were making plans to do so, anticipating cuts to come.
Scaling back these efforts could prove tragic, Gipson said. Without an extra boost of support to get tested …