Trump administration cuts $600 million in HIV, STD prevention and surveillance grants

FILE – A sign stands at an entrance to the main campus of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, Feb. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Amy, File)

(AP)– The Trump administration is terminating $600 million in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grants for programs supporting HIV and STD prevention and HIV surveillance.

A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson told ABC News the cuts will impact public health funding in California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota and that the grants are being terminated “because they do not reflect agency priorities.”

The grants affected include those issued to state and local health departments, hospitals, universities and non-governmental organizations.

Among the cuts are $1.1 million for HIV surveillance in Los Angeles County, $5.2 million to Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago to increase use of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) among Black cisgender women and $7 million for the city of Chicago to study populations that are disproportionately affected by STDs.

A spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget told ABC News the CDC cuts affect states with a “history of fraud and mismanagement.”

This is not the first time the Trump administration has cut federal funding for HIV studies and research. In March 2025, the National Institutes of Health canceled funding for dozens of HIV-related research grants.

Additionally, last year, the administration reportedly considered a plan to eliminate the CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention, sources told ABC News at the time.

Matthew Rose, senior public policy advocate at Human Rights Campaign — an LGBTQ+ advocacy group — said cutting public health funding could pause, or even reverse, hard-earned gains made against the spread of HIV in the U.S.

Annual infections in the U.S. have fallen by more than two-thirds since the height of the HIV/Aids epidemic in the mid-1980s, thanks to earlier detection and better treatments, according to the federal Minority HIV/AIDS Fund.

“Getting people to engage in prevention work is some of the hardest work we do, but it is so meaningful, and we are on the precipice of truly transforming the way that prevention has happened,” Rose told ABC News. “So we’ve done it in all the ways we’ve asked for. We created new technologies, we’ve done programmatic working efforts, we’ve drilled down into those most effective programming, and then they’re like, ‘No, let’s pull up all the roots.'”

The offices of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis told ABC News on Tuesday night that they have received no formal notice from the White House or the federal government regarding the cancellation or termination of any funding.

A spokesperson for Newsom’s office told ABC News it would “respond appropriately” when the administration takes action.

Separately, a spokesperson for Polis’ office said the governor “is committed to continuing to fight for Coloradans and the best interest of the state, which includes working with the federal administration when we can, as we have done with every administration.”

Rose noted that President Donald Trump launched a program in 2019 with a goal to end the HIV epidemic in the U.S. by 2030, which seems to contradict the federal government’s termination of grants.

He added that federal funding has helped lead to better detection tools, better treatments and better prevention methods.

“We’re finding ways to give people more options than they’ve ever had before,” Rose said. “We’ve gotten to the point where you can now get a shot twice a year to prevent HIV, which is insane if you ask someone in the ’90s what they would have done for something like that.”

Rose said that researchers can look to private donors and other organizations for alternative funding, but it will likely not be enough to fill the gap left behind by the federal government.

He added that organizations have worked for decades to convince the general public that providing better health care for HIV patients resulted in better health care for the general population, and said he fears losing that progress.

“You’re looking at HIV funding in the United States, you’re looking at billions of dollars getting spent on HIV,” he said. “None of the other HIV organizations and private companies have that kind of money to put into that kind of space. … Even if the private institutions do what they can, they can’t make up for that gap that we worked so hard for that federal money to do.”