“As we recognize World AIDS Day 2022, it’s undeniable that we have made remarkable progress in the work to end the HIV epidemic. Unfortunately, 2022 also gave us a stark reminder that key fundamental flaws in healthcare and in how we fund public health in the U.S. These are material barriers to ending this epidemic and to driving better health for people of we too often get away with leaving behind.

This year’s monkeypox (mpox) outbreak provided the clearest reminder in recent years that Congress’s persistent failure to adequately fund public health and healthcare services puts people at risk for grave illness and unnecessary death. Unchecked systemic failures like a lack of dedicated funding for sexual health clinics, rampant stigma, unaffordable healthcare, and racial disparities allowed nearly 30,000 people to acquire mpox – and they allow HIV and STIs to thrive.

This World AIDS Day should be a reality check: our nation’s leaders cannot let up on the work of ending the closely related epidemics of HIV and STIs when there are clear pathways to progress in sight. The National Coalition of STD Directors (NCSD) is calling on Congress to provide funding for the federal mpox response and for frontline sexual health clinics right now. We are calling on the President to release his long-awaited STI action plan and finally put real money into the fight against STIs in his FY’24 Budget. We are calling on federal agencies to use their full authority to prioritize urgent needs: for the CDC to immediately restructure to provide better, more responsive service to the field and for FDA and NIH to curb the backlog on diagnostics and treatment.

This day is a reminder of the danger of ignoring a health crisis when we could be doing so much more. In the ongoing spirit of World AIDS Day, in the coming months, NCSD will release an End the STI Epidemics initiative and call on the Biden Administration to demonstrate its commitment to ending the epidemics by implementing this plan in full.”

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