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was last open in a competitive process in 2008, with grantees able to apply for continuation of funds on a yearly basis. In this latest competitive process, Philadelphia received $570,000 less from the CDC, according to AACO, and the funding was distributed to 22 agencies, compared with 15 organizations in the last cycle. AACO’s revised Request for Proposals took into account the new CDC guidelines and the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and was informed by the Philadelphia Community Planning Group, an independent panel that sets priorities for addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic locally. “It’s a fairly significant shift that starts with and emanates from the president’s strategy to address HIV/AIDS, which puts more of a focus on identifying and getting into care those who are already HIV-positive,” said Nan Feyler, chief of staff of the city’s Health Department. “For many years, there was a focus on testing negatives but there’s a lot of epidemiological evidence to show that many folks, in particular those in the African-American [men who have sex with men] community, are positive but have not been tested.” For that reason, Feyler said the past success of a program in generating HIV-positive tests was integral when it came to where the funding was directed. “Because of the shift toward focusing on positives, we had to look carefully at how effective the agency’s strategy was in identifying, locating and getting tested those who are positive,” she said. “It wasn’t just about the number of people who were tested but, to be consistent with the president’s priorities, the number of people who tested positive.” The RFP was issued in mid-October with a bidders’ conference held at the end of the month, where interested organizations could garner more information, although individual conversations between service providers and city officials were prohibited. The applications were due in midNovember and came before the Resource Allocation Advisory Committee, a group of 12 individuals appointed by the health commissioner — none of whom are allowed any conflict of interest, such as an affiliation with a service provider. The RAAC then made its recommendations for awards to the health commissioner, who gave final approval. While there were six categories funded through the High Impact program, a seventh, Social Media Technology focused on the MSM population, was included in the RFP but no funding allocated. “There was a very small amount of money earmarked in that category and, in light of the shift in the priorities and the $570,000 funding cut, it wasn’t cost-effective to use money for that category,” Feyler said. While Colours, which had received $190,000 in the last cycle, was initially not included on the awards list, money had been allocated for the organization. Feyler said executive director Robert
Burns passed away the same time as the decisions were being made, and city officials wanted to meet with the agency’s board before finalizing the funding decision. “They weren’t on the list that was sent out because we were waiting to talk to the board,” she said. “It would have been listed with every other agency but because this happened at the same time, we didn’t have information about what was going to happen to Colours so we wanted to meet with them first.” Colours’ funding will be directed toward targeted testing for African-American MSM. Action AIDS previously received $233,000 but did not receive any funding through the High Impact program this cycle. Because of the cuts, Action AIDS last week laid off three staff members in its prevention department — one tester, one outreach worker and one comprehensive risk counseling and services staffer. Action AIDS executive director Kevin Burns said one of the released employees had been with the agency for more than a decade. After the layoff, the agency now has 84 full-time employees, with three staffers working in the prevention unit. Burns said Action AIDS now has about $170,000 left for its prevention efforts, with a total agency budget of about $6 million. Burns contended that, considering the funding shifts, there wasn’t enough time between the release of the RFP and the due date. “When the new direction came out, AACO gave us little time to adjust what we were doing,” Burns said. “We were already in the cycle and weren’t able to shift things quickly enough to meet the goals. It’s hard for the priorities to be changed midstream and then have them expect people to meet those goals. I think this is a systems issue, not any issue with the AIDS services organizations.” Feyler said the timeline was standard and that she believes the department “created a process that gave folks adequate information.” Elsewhere in Philadelphia, Mazzoni Center was awarded $665,480, a jump from its previous $610,000. Mazzoni has a total budget of about $9.5 million. Prevention Point Philadelphia received a total of $397,500, of which $150,000 will benefit its Trans-Health Information Project, in particular for comprehensive prevention with positives and health education/risk reduction. Other awardees include The Attic, which received $50,000, and SafeGuards, which received $61,428 in the social-network category, an increase from the $50,000 it received in the last cycle. SafeGuards had applied for funding in five categories, which would have totaled $270,000. “Considering that some agencies got nothing, I should feel happy we got funded at all,” said SafeGuards executive director Brian Green. “But overall, I wasn’t very PAGE 16