A PLHIV NETWORKS RESPONSE TO THE NHAS FEDERAL IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

‍December 1, 2022—The U.S. People Living with HIV Caucus has reviewed the National HIV/AIDS Strategy Federal Implementation Plan, which was released on August 29, 2022, and created a document in response, Filling the Gaps: A PLHIV Networks response to the NHAS Federal Implementation Plan, to address what is and is not included in the Plan and provide concrete recommendations. Importantly, these recommendations are not exhaustive of the actions the federal government must take to fully support people living with HIV in the ways we need. Rather, they are reflective of priority actions we see as necessary to fill in the gaps in the Implementation Plan within the three-year time span provided in the NHAS.

Our review of the Implementation Plan was guided by the analysis and recommendations set forth in Demanding Better: An HIV Federal Policy Agenda by People Living with HIV. As the first set of policy recommendations created collaboratively by all national networks of people living with HIV in the U.S., Demanding Better lays out a clear roadmap for the federal administration, Congress, and federal agencies to achieve their goal of ending the HIV epidemic by 2030 in the United States with a focus on protecting human rights and improving quality of life for people living with HIV.

Some highlights of Filling in the Gaps:

• The Implementation Plan made significant progress by including a multi-dimensional quality of life indicator that includes social and structural determinants of health. Measuring quality of life is an important step. However, we also demand a federal response that affirmatively improves quality of life and whole-person care for people living with HIV.
  
  
• The Implementation Plan currently does not adequately address community concerns around Molecular HIV Surveillance and Cluster and Detection Response. In this document we identified concrete, critical steps that the federal government must implement immediately to better protect the human rights of people living with HIV.
  
•  Communities most impacted by HIV in the United States must have an organized voice in decision-making. While it is not feasible to provide for individual input from the estimated 1.2 million people living with HIV in the U.S, it is feasible to ensure structured and formal involvement of regional and national networks of people living with HIV, and of other organized groups of constituent stakeholders throughout the domestic HIV response. We have provided recommendations for how the Implementation Plan and individual agency actions can and should be strengthened to structurally include meaningful involvement of people with HIV/AIDS (MIPA).

“As the Federal Government’s 2022-2025 NHAS plan is well underway, the Caucus will continue to monitor and urge the execution of what has already been committed to in the Implementation Plan, while also pushing for the government to take visible steps on what the Caucus has identified in Filling in the Gaps as critical actions to improve the lives of PLHIV,” said Ronald Johnson, Chair of the U.S. PLHIV Caucus. Read the full document Filling the Gaps: A PLHIV Networks response to the NHAS Federal Implementation Plan here

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Press Contact: U.S. People Living with HIV Caucus 

Contact: Agnes Nkhata-Blackwood Phone: 469-652-4009

Email: coordinator@icw-na.org

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