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Two Iowa lawmakers played key roles in the debate and passage of the latest reauthorization of the Ryan White Program, ensuring that thousands of Americans living with HIV/AIDS will continue to receive the support and medical care they need.

While members of Congress work to reauthorize the Ryan White CARE Act, some states are scrambling to fulfill their role under portions of the existing program as a pharmaceutical provider of last resort. Although it isn’t the first time states have had to institute waiting lists for participation in the program, this does mark the first time such waiting lists have been instituted without a clear path to additional funding to provide the needed funds.

Green card applications that would have otherwise been denied based solely on the applicant’s HIV status have now been placed on hold, in anticipation of a rule change from U.S. Health and Human Services that will effectively end a ban that has been in existence for more than two decades.
The Sept. 15 memo, authored by [...]

Congressional negotiations on proposed health care reform have dominated news cycles for months, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that other important committee work has been set aside.
The Ryan White Act, a federal program that provides basic care, treatment, education and support services related to HIV/AIDS, is scheduled to sunset on Sept. 30 unless Congress reauthorizes [...]

Nick Rhoades is the first to admit that he was wrong, and that he deserved reprimand for failing to disclose to an intimate partner that he had tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. What he isn’t sure of, however, is the effectiveness of the decade-old Iowa law with which he was charged.

Although knowledge about HIV has increased in the decade since Iowa wrote its criminal transmission law, the law itself remains untouched. Donald Baxter, who was once almost charged under the law, acknowledges that another decade will bring more knowledge and perhaps changes.

A federal program that provides financial assistance to more than half a million Americans who have contracted HIV or have AIDS will sunset on Sept. 30 unless Congress reauthorizes it, and its prospects seem uncertain.

For the past 22 years individuals testing postive for HIV were prohibited from traveling and immigrating to the U.S. Now the government is deciding whether that ban, which some say is unnecessary, should be lifted.

An Iowa man, whose only previous encounter with the law was a 2006 operating-while-intoxicated conviction, was sentenced to the maximum allowed by state law for failing to disclose to a one-time intimate partner that he was HIV-positive. The case, which has not resulted in the one-time partner actually contracting HIV, has been used as evidence by some who say it’s time that state criminal transmission laws should be re-evaluated.

In a previous report, The Iowa Independent detailed the criminal case of a Bremer County man who was charged and convicted to 25 years in prison under the state’s criminal HIV transmission law. Although this case was by no means the first to be prosecuted under provisions of the statute some consider archaic, its details have provided a springboard for Iowa’s launch into a larger national debate regarding whether criminal prosecutions for diseases are appropriate or constitutional.