AIDS funding disparity

New York City Comptroller William Thompson has publicly criticized the Department of Mental Health and Hygiene’s (DOHMH) distribution of HIV and AIDS related services and funds across the five boroughs. According to a 2001 study by the DOHMH, Jamaica has the highest rate of HIV and AIDS diagnosis in Queens.
According to Thompson, the Bronx and Queens will receive no funding at all for supportive counseling and family stabilization services. An equitable distribution, according to Thompson, would see Queens receiving $319,051 in equity for these services. Figures show that in 2004, 13.5% of Queens residents have HIV or the AIDS virus.
Thompson said that a $472 million contract with Medical Health and Research Associates (MHRA), an executive agency of the Department of Health set up in 2003 with the goal of ensuring that medicines and medical devices work, fails to provide needed services to residents based on geographic need.
The Ryan White Care Act was created to ensure services provided were based on the greatest need. Thompson charges that these services covered under the contract awarded to the MHRA; such as legal services, supportive counseling and family stabilization services, treatment adherence support and out-stationed medical care teams, are not being disbursed evenly.
“I am concerned that the contract, as administered, provides services in a manner financially and geographically disproportionate to the number of individuals across the city who have been affected,” Thompson wrote in a letter to DOHMH Commissioner Thomas Frieden. “This represents a highly inadequate distribution of services, and does not consider the pressing need that many individuals have for services in their neighborhood.”