Trump administration plans to remove all members of HIV advisory council

By Dan Levine

-The Trump administration plans to remove all the members of a presidential advisory council on HIV/AIDS and provided no timeline for replacing them as the government overhauls its prevention and treatment efforts for the disease.

The 30-year-old Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) had more than 30 members before U.S. President Donald Trump's inauguration in January, according to an archived version of its web page.

Andrew Nixon, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, confirmed the agency was ending the volunteer service of the council's members, saying this was common practice for a new administration. He did not specify a timeline.

Two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that all of the council's members were to be removed. 

Because PACHA’s existence is required by statute, Nixon said it will “continue to provide advice, information, and recommendations” to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He did not say who would perform those tasks or when new members may be appointed.

HHS last week implemented Kennedy's layoffs of 10,000 federal health employees, part of massive cuts to the federal government under Trump. The layoffs affected many agencies involved in efforts to end HIV, a virus estimated to affect about 1.2 million people in the U.S. 

Among them were job cuts to HHS' Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS where several employees including PACHA Executive Director Caroline Talev were terminated, according to LinkedIn posts. Talev declined to comment.

In addition, five branches in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s HIV prevention division were eliminated and about 150 employees cut, according to a third source familiar with the situation. 

Carl Schmid, executive director of the HIV+Hepatitis Policy Institute and a former PACHA co-chair, said HIV policy in the U.S. is in “crisis mode” after the layoffs. “We just don’t know what is happening with HIV in this country anymore,” he said.

Kennedy has said he was creating a new Administration for a Healthy America that will include an HIV/AIDS division. 

A more streamlined operation “will be better positioned to end this epidemic, which is a priority for this Administration,” Nixon said. 

During his first term, Trump initiated the Ending the HIV Epidemic program, which reported it helped bring down new U.S. HIV infections 12% from 2018 to 2022. PACHA helped shape the program, Schmid said.

(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Cynthia Osterman)