Mass. services for HIV face cuts

Services that will be cut back include distribution of free condoms to schools, colleges, and health facilities, and programs that give intravenous drug users clean needles, said Kevin Cranston, director of the state Bureau of Infectious Disease.

A program that sends education counselors to night clubs and other areas frequented by gay men, a population that has historically had the highest infection rates, will be eliminated. Billboards, radio, and other media ads promoting HIV testing and prevention programs will be scrapped. So, too, will be training for community case managers who work directly with AIDS patients.

Fueling the cuts is a dramatic shift in the way the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be funding state AIDS prevention programs.

The CDC is taking money from states like Massachusetts with lower rates of HIV infection to focus its resources in states, including many in the South, with high or increasing rates. New regulations will also significantly restrict the way Massachusetts can spend its federal HIV prevention dollars, a change that will compound the cuts. It will require the state to shift money from community-based programs that aim to prevent further infections to clinic-based HIV testing and programs targeted to people who are already infected.

We are “ensuring that money actually follows the epidemic,’’ Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, said during a recent press conference.

“As we move forward in these challenging economic times … we have to maximize the availability of every dollar,’’ he said.

But Cranston, who has led Massachusetts’s AIDS prevention initiatives for most of the past decade, said he is worried the new federal strategy will backfire by weakening efforts to prevent new infections in high-risk populations.

“Well-trained staff in the field, good information, as well as direct services for HIV-negative and positive people, together, have given us the success this past decade,’’ Cranston said. “I would hate to see a resurgence of HIV in Massachusetts after being so successful this decade.’’