Bill Text: CA AR33 | 2021-2022 | Regular Session | Introduced
Bill Title: Relative to public health.
Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 3-0)
Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2022-03-29 - In committee: Hearing cancelled at the request of author. [AR33 Detail]
Download: California-2021-AR33-Introduced.html
CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE—
2021–2022 REGULAR SESSION
House Resolution
No. 33
| Introduced by Assembly Member Gipson (Coauthors: Assembly Members Burke and Robert Rivas) |
April 05, 2021 |
Relative to public health.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
HR 33, as introduced, Gipson.
Digest Key
Bill Text
WHEREAS, President Joe Biden issued a statement on December 1, 2020, World AIDS Day, stating, “We will reinstate the Office of National AIDS Policy, release a new comprehensive National Strategy on HIV/AIDS, and expand support for bipartisan programs like the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria”; and
WHEREAS, President Barack Obama followed through on a commitment to develop the first comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy for the United States, which he released in July 2010 following extensive public and community engagement, including through 2 of 14 White House HIV/AIDS community discussions that were held in California; and
WHEREAS, The Obama-Biden Administration worked with the Congress to ensure that the White House Office of National AIDS Policy had $1,400,00 in dedicated annual funding that was critical to ensuring adequate staffing, travel, and resources for extensive stakeholder engagement before and after the strategy was released; and
WHEREAS, The Obama-Biden Office of National AIDS Policy commissioned two studies from the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine) to inform the strategy and support its implementation; and
WHEREAS, The Obama-Biden Office of National AIDS Policy provided essential leadership in ensuring that the federal government stayed abreast of advances that could support the goals of the strategy, including through, but not limited to, all of the following:
(a) Ensuring that the needs of people with HIV were fully considered as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was being implemented.
(b) Ensuring that biomedical HIV advances were acknowledged and deployed, including the recognition that undetectable=untransmittable (U=U), meaning that persons with HIV who are durably virally suppressed cannot transmit HIV sexually.
(c) Encouragement of the implementation of preexposure
prophylaxis (PrEP); and
WHEREAS, The Obama-Biden Administration released an updated National HIV/AIDS Strategy for the United States in 2015; and
WHEREAS, HIV diagnosis rates had been relatively stable for many years prior to the Obama-Biden Administration, and federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data suggests that annual new diagnoses declined by 17.2 percent from 2010 when the Strategy was released to 2018, meaning that 6,463 fewer people were acquiring HIV each year and deaths declined by 10.4 percent, resulting in 1,615 fewer deaths per year; and
WHEREAS, HIV viral suppression is a critical metric for assessing HIV outcomes and the effectiveness of HIV services and after the strategy was released, the CDC published its first national estimates of the share of all people with HIV who have achieved viral suppression, finding that only about one in four people with HIV (27.9 percent) in the United States were virally suppressed in 2010, and yet by 2016, viral suppression rates in the United States had nearly doubled to 51 percent; and
WHEREAS, HIV outcomes are generally much better for persons receiving some type of service from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, which establishes a comprehensive system of care for people with HIV with and without insurance coverage, and the program serves a population that is reflective of the epidemic with roughly 3 in 4 clients being non-White and 6 in 10 having incomes below the poverty level. From 2010 to 2018, inclusive, viral suppression among Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program clients rose from 69.4 percent to 87.1 percent, and research found that viral suppression had risen in all groups and disparities were reduced for most groups in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, and risk group; and
WHEREAS, The Trump Administration announced a 10-year Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) initiative in 2019 aiming to reduce HIV transmission over the next decade, originally focused on the 48 counties, including 8 counties in California, that account for one-half of all HIV transmissions, plus Washington, D.C., San Juan, Puerto Rico, and seven rural states with a high HIV burden, while concurrently taking steps to undermine the HIV response through efforts to eviscerate the ACA, weaken the Medicaid program, and weaken or eliminate civil rights protections for people with HIV and LGBTQ+ individuals; and
WHEREAS, The Trump Administration never staffed the White House Office of National AIDS Policy; and
WHEREAS, Much of the human capital deployed to respond to COVID-19 has come from the HIV community, including clinicians, researchers, public health officials, and community advocates, creating new opportunities to engage communities in HIV services, but with new budget and other pressures on HIV programs; and
WHEREAS, The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to improving health equity and tackling social determinants of health and the sustained national response to HIV is perhaps the best example of successful health equity interventions and strategies; now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Assembly of the State of California, That the Assembly commends President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their strong leadership to Build Back Better and strengthen the nation for all of its residents, including persons living with HIV and communities heavily impacted by HIV and calls upon the Biden-Harris Administration to do all of the following:
(a) Expeditiously reestablish the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (Office) within the Domestic Policy Council.
(b) Appoint a Director of the Office with a deep understanding of the clinical, social, and economic needs of people with HIV and affected communities to coordinate HIV policy across the executive branch and engage in all relevant internal policy dialogues
impacting broader health, economic, housing, employment, civil rights, and other programs to represent the interests and perspectives of people with HIV and affected communities.
(c) Provide sufficient budget and staffing resources to do all of the following:
(1) Enable the office to review the recently published Trump Administration’s HIV federal action plan, ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America, in developing forward, HFP looking, evidence-based, and actionable update to the National HIV/AIDS Strategy.
(2) Maintain consistent engagement with the diversity of HIV community stakeholders, including through holding public forums and other engagements in communities across the United States, with an emphasis on marginalized and underserved communities.
(3) Fund policy and other research with an emphasis on reducing HIV-related health and other disparities and increasing equity through technological innovation and cross-program and cross-agency collaboration.
(d) Ensure that the Director of the Office is enabled to keep the President and the Vice President abreast of emerging issues and opportunities, including the emergence of new long-acting products for HIV prevention and treatment and new technological innovations that can be used to achieve an end to the HIV epidemic; and be it further
Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies of this resolution to the author for appropriate distribution.
