MN Spokesman Recorder Article

LOCAL NEWS

Funding cuts decimate Black HIV prevention programs
By: Stephani Maari Booker
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Originally posted 7/5/2006

Black organizations have history of conflicts with State


Conclusion of a two-part story


The Minnesota Department of Health’s (MDH) new funding decisions are causing an uproar among HIV/AIDS prevention and intervention service providers. Especially galling is the fact that among the 2006-2008 Community-Based HIV Prevention grantees there are only two organizations that are by and for people of color (excluding three funded for work with African-born heterosexuals).

This is down from nine people-of-color organizations in the previous grant cycle (2003-2006). Additionally, some longtime HIV/AIDS service organizations that were created by and for people of color haven’t received funding in either of the last two funding cycles, including the African American AIDS Task Force (AAATF).

Before Kip Beardsley left his position as MDH AID/HIV director in June, he told the MSR that “When we looked at agencies to award [funding] to, we took the recommendations of the community review committee.” This committee is made up of people of various ethnic, gender, sexual orientation and professional backgrounds who are charged with reviewing grant applications, giving them numerical scores, and handing the scores to MDH.

Beardsley also said that the grant proposal review process took into account previous records of service, and he insisted that organizations that were not award funding had not received high enough scores by the community review committee.

However, $224,000 of funding under the category “Men Who Have Sex with Men (men of all races, 25 years and older)” was not awarded to any agency. MDH said that this is because not enough proposals submitted for this funding scored high enough to receive it.

On April 17, MDH held a meeting of currently funded and formerly funded programs during which they were supposed to advise MDH on funding “new or existing interventions” with the leftover $224,000. At this meeting, many present claimed that one of the reasons MDH didn’t receive enough grant applications for the Men Who Have Sex with Men (MSM) category is because programs created by and for people of color were discouraged from applying.

After the meeting, MDH decided to use part of the money to “fund one program in the African American community to implement HIV prevention activities among MSM from a variety of racial/ethnic backgrounds.” Organizations have until July 19 to submit proposals to MDH.

The grievance letter submitted to MDH in April by a group of 11 organizations that provide HIV/AIDS prevention and education services contends that “MDH specifically discouraged minority agencies from applying in the MSM [men who have sex with men] All Races category.”

AAATF Executive Director Gwen Velez says that at one of the request for proposals (RFP) information meetings that MDH held to educate potential applicants about the HIV prevention grants, “There was a young lady from an African American agency that asked a question about MSM of all races. Pretty much, we were told there is a category for men who have sex with men of color, and if you don’t have the capacity of reaching the White community, then you would be better off applying in MSM of color category.”

Charlnitta “Chi” Ellis, director of the HIV/AIDS/STD (HAS) Prevention and Awareness Program at The City, Inc., said she remembers that at one of these meetings, “One of the gentlemen from, I believe it was Turning Point, asked a specific question regarding [applying for MSM of all races funding]. Basically, Kip [Beardsley’s] response was that ‘You should apply in the category of African American.’ That left you to believe that ‘all races’ meant ‘Caucasian.’ They didn’t just come out and say that, but that’s the way the conversation went.”

When asked if people-of-color organizations were discouraged from applying for the MSM of all races funding, Beardsley said, “That certainly is not a message that we ever sent out, and if that’s the message that folks got, that is truly unfortunate… MDH never said…communities of color were ineligible for to apply for MSM of all races funding.”

Beardsley also said, “I believe where some of that may have come from was that…specifically for men who have sex with men, the [Minneapolis] Urban League got a very significant grant directly from the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] to reach African American men, and so what we had said…was that we would take that into consideration and try to make sure that the limited amount of funding that we have for MSM of color intervention was strategically targeted to take that into account.”

The Minneapolis Urban League’s federal CDC funding is for a research project in collaboration with the Program in Human Sexuality at the University of Minnesota that involves studying the effect of peer outreach on reducing HIV transmission among African American men who have sex with men, according to www.clincialtrials.gov and the MUL website.

The HIV prevention service providers’ grievance letter also alleges that “MDH specifically discouraged the Minneapolis Urban League from applying in the MSM categories. This was based on their success in securing a CDC grant.”

“Minneapolis Urban League has the right to go to the CDC and get as many dollars as they want directly,” AAATF’s Velez asserted. “What did that have to do with the rest of the community? If AAATF were to go directly to CDC and get a million dollars or whatever, I would hope that that would no impact on the work that other people in the community are trying to do.”

The grievance letter also charges that “Staff at MDH created a climate of retaliation and fear in the African American community before the official RFP proposal process began, and during that created a perception that proposals from this community would not be judged impartially and fairly in the allocations process. The perception created was that there was racial bias in the internal MDH review.”

According to Chi Ellis, the African American Health Workers Network, a coalition of African American HIV/AIDS service providers, filed a grievance with MDH over Kip Beardsley’s decision to remove the Community Cooperative Council on HIV & AIDS Prevention’s regular meetings from a Black church.

At a meeting between Beardsley and the coalition, Ellis said, “[The coalition] asked, ‘Why was this decision made, and who made this decision?’ And [Beardsley] said he made the decision, and that was that, and it was going to stay like that. And we said, ‘No, it’s not.’ And as a community, we came together; we wrote a letter to the commissioner and had meetings… And his decision was overturned. And that pi**ed him off.”

Of Beardsley, Ellis said, “I don’t think he was fond of the Black community. At all.”


Stephani Booker welcomes reader responses to sbooker@spokesman-recorder.com