Three Bay Area Asian and Native American groups were recently awarded CDC grants meant to enhance HIV prevention among people of color. The grants are part of the $21 million to be distributed among 27 national and regional groups as part of CDC's Advancing HIV Prevention initiative.

The Asian and Pacific Islander Wellness Center (APIWC) will receive $600,000-$775,000 to provide national capacity building services for API-serving organizations and $365,000-$400,000 to help organizations increase access and use of HIV prevention services. The Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum will receive two grants altogether totaling $600,000-$2 million to improve HIV prevention among APIs. A third group, the National Native American AIDS Prevention Center, will receive two grants altogether totaling $1.2 million-$2.45 million for prevention work among American Native/Alaskan Native communities.

The grant announcements follow by almost a month a 12 percent cut to San Francisco's Ryan White funds this year. The city health department is cutting whole categories of service, including integrated case management. Hardest hit by the cuts will be agencies working with communities of color, who comprise 47 percent of clients receiving Ryan White-funded services, according to several local minority groups' executive directors.

To cope with slashed Ryan White CARE funding, local cuts proposed will reduce APIWC's current capacity by 50 percent, resulting in loss of services to 90 severe-need, linguistically isolated API immigrants and refugees, the center said. Those service cut will be implemented Friday, April 23. In addition, CDC's grant to APIWC cannot be used to backfill the agency's CARE-services funding gap, said John Manzon-Santos, APIWC's executive director. About a third of the grant will be allocated to APIWC's national partners.

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