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SOUTHERN VOICE OCTOBER 14/1993
State officials repairing troubled minority HIV program
Internal squabbles brought
the People of Color Initiative
to a halt this summer
by ANDREA L. BERRY
Atlanta—Even as they make plans to intro
duce a statewide HIV awareness campaign for
African-American women next month, officials
in the state of Georgia’s AIDS program are scur
rying to fix problems that brought its minority
HIV prevention program to a virtual halt this
summer.
Billed in 1987 as an innovative partnership
between the state, the Morehouse School of
Medicine and grassroots organizations, the
People of Color Initiative was organized to fund
community-based organizations doing HIV edu
cation in communities of color in Georgia. But
six years and several million dollars later, those
involved with the program see a “bureaucratic
nightmare” that values power and paperwork
over people and prevention.
“We’re not talking about reducing the spread
of HIV infection through educating people of
color,” says Dora Burke, the medical school’s
staff contact for the initiative. “Put all of that in
the back of your mind. Today, we’re talking
about personal ego gratification for whoever
needs it.”
State officials and those at Morehouse are
blaming each other for the problems. And the
federal Centers for Disease control, which pro
vides federal money for the initiative, was so
concerned that it has stepped in to monitor the
program.
Every year, community groups compete for
federal funds available through the Georgia De
partment of Human Resources to provide coun
seling, workshops and street outreach to men,
women, teenagers and children in urban and
rural areas.
Originally, Morehouse School of Medicine’s
role was to help the DHR move those funds
faster and more effectively. “When we first
started, we had to sell organizations on the value
of HIV prevention because the concept was so
new,” says Burke. “Now we have more [organi
zations] who want to participate than we have
money to give.”
Though problems with the initiative had been
simmering for six years, they come to a boil in
March as Dr. Kathleen Toomey took over as
director of the state’s infectious disease pro
gram. Dr. Toomey, who brings an impressive
public health background to her job, recently
told the Georgia Task Force on AIDS that the
state should emphasize “people rather than dis
ease” and that “community agencies are the nec
essary links to an integrated approach to preven
tion and care.”
But as Dr. Toomey publicly stressed the need
for more collaboration at the community level,
internal power struggles were making her staff
look more like the cast of a steamy prime time
soap than a public health program. As one DHR
AIDS staffer put it, “We were all jockeying for
positions with Dr. Toomey. Those community
organizations just got lost in the shuffle.”
As the power struggles caused the program
to grind to a halt, delays in dispersing money
began to affect the community organizations,
one of which had to borrow money to meet its
payroll. Others had staff who worked second
jobs. Then in July, without Dr. Toomey’s knowl
edge, the DHR advertised statewide for a new
coordinating center to replace Morehouse in
managing and evaluating the program.
Although one DeKalb County organization
applied, public health officials say the ad was “a
mistake,” and announced that Morehouse would
remain the initiative’s coordinating center until
July 1994.
“I don’t know why that announcement was
published without [Dr. Toomcy’s] knowledge,”
says Tim Broughton, acting coordinator for the
People of Color Initiative. “It should never have
happened.”
By August, the People of Color initiative
had been in turmoil for eight months. The com
munity organizations had no idea why the DHR
couldn’t resolve the problems.
“No one was talking, and when they were,
they just kept telling us they were ‘working on
it,”’ says Dazon Dixon of SistcrLovc, an At
lanta-based agency that provides education to
African-American women and one of the orga
nizations funded this year by DHR.
Questions were also being raised about the
way DHR was processing funding applications.
Review committee member James Beverly, as
sociate director of Georgia Health Decisions,
called the 1992 review process “inadequate and
disgraceful,” adding there were a lot of “off-the-
record and negative comments” about the
Morehouse staff’s participation in the program.
For the past seven years, Morehouse School
of Medicine has received SI .3 million from DHR
to perform various tasks for minority organiza
tions funded to do HIV/AIDS prevention educa
tion. At best, the Morehouse contracts with DHR
“were unclear, and efforts to clarify those re
sponsibilities were never supported,” says Gwen
Dolyn Cutter, the state’s former HIV program
manager. This year, efforts by DHR to make
Morehouse “more accountable” resulted in
Morehouse’s refusal to sign the coordinating
contract for several months.
“[The state] was angry because we wouldn’t
take the heat for them on of all the problems
with the initiative,” says Burke. “We’ve served
as the whipping post the whole time.” Cutter
maintains she has not been part of the state’s
contract negotiations with Morehouse for the
AIDS educators Dazon Dixon and Rudy Carn
talk with Dr. Kathleen Toomey (right), head
of the state’s infectious disease program,
about how to fix problems in the People of
Color Initiative.
past two years. “I was only responsible for imple
menting decisions that were already made by
other managers,” she says.
As a scorecard became necessary to keep
track of the internal bickering, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) entered
the fray.
In an independent assessment of Georgia’s
HIV prevention program, a CDC team acknowl
edged a “breakdown of communication between
the Morehouse School of Medicine staff and
state AIDS officials over what should be done
for [community based groups funded through
the initiative].”
The CDC team also expressed concern that
DHR had never formally evaluated Morehouse
School of Medicine’s role in the program.
“I don’t feel that DHR hasn’t listened to the
CONTINUES ON PAGE 16
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