HIV Prevention: Community Planning Groups

Mr Stryker and colleagues1 summarized several barriers to effective human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention programs, but did not make any mention of the revolutionary changes that have occurred in the past 2 years in the way HIV prevention programs are planned in the United States. Sixty-five health department grantees (all states, several cities, the District of Columbia, and the US territories) who receive HIV prevention funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are required to work in close partnership with community planning groups (CPGs) when prioritizing HIV prevention needs and interventions to meet those needs.2 In total, these grantees received approximately $175 million in HIV prevention cooperative agreements in fiscal year 1994. Additionally, they received over $12 million in fiscal year 1994 resources to support HIV prevention community planning activities.