When Jim Wymore moved to Tucson 11 years ago, he was looking for a
fresh start after watching most of his friends in San Francisco die
from the destruction of AIDS.
When he arrived in Tucson, Wymore, who was diagnosed with HIV in
1985, was emotionally grieving and in bad shape physically, the results
of 14 years of ineffective treatment until doctors figured out the
right combination of meds to keep the virus under control.
“I moved here because I had family here, but my old family of choice
pretty much disintegrated. They were dead and dying,” Wymore
recalls.
In a small room off the entrance of the Southern Arizona AIDS
Foundation (SAAF) south of Euclid Avenue and Broadway Boulevard, Wymore
sits surrounded by shelves that resemble a health food store. It’s a
small glimpse of where Wymore says he found a new family at the AIDS
care and prevention organization.
The rows of vitamins and supplements in the room are also part of a
program he knows first-hand helps people with HIV/AIDS feel better and
more empowered in taking care of themselves.
“The side effects of the new medications are horrendous for some
people. I take lots of vitamins and supplements. My energy level is
better and that makes me feel better,” Wymore explains.
“I think one can argue that while that has nothing to do with my
physical health, a feeling of well-being is most important in helping
me take better care of myself. It might not be about life and death,
but there’s something to say about self-empowerment when dealing with
this disease.”
That self-empowerment has been dished out through SAAF’s Travis
Wright Memorial Buyers’ Club the past nine years—allowing the
organization to purchase large quantities of vitamins and nutritional
supplements and sell them at a 25 to 28 percent mark-up to those with
HIV/AIDS who come in with long lists of recommendations from their
naturopaths.
While the buyers’ club remains in place and Wymore continues to
volunteer there, it’s reeling from funding changes at SAAF that have
forced the agency to cut its Complementary Therapies program, which
helped clients receive free naturopathic services, like massage,
chiropractic and acupuncture—and vitamins and supplements through
the buyers’ club.
Other programs have seen cuts, too, forcing the agency to trim back
on core services for the first time in its 21-year history.
According to Wendell Hicks, SAAF executive director, cutting the
complementary therapies program wasn’t an easy decision—30 people
were receiving services that wouldn’t have been able to afford them on
their own. But private foundation funding was hit hard in this economic
upheaval—SAAF was told by funders they were no longer able to be
part of Complementary Therapies.
The program was once funded through federal and state dollars, but
four years ago naturopathic services used to complement traditional
treatments were no longer eligible. SAAF turned to private foundations
to keep it going, although it wasn’t able to offer the program to as
many people as it had in the past.
“A couple of years ago we were serving more than 100 people,” SAAF
Development Director Michele Bart says.
“It’s frustrating, but we have foundations that care very much about
complementary funding, but the market hasn’t been good for the
foundations.”
In July, the organization and other local agencies working with
HIV/AIDS clients were told there would be cuts in federal funds
administered through the state for medications.
In August, they found out the number of medications offered to those
who qualified went from eight pages of medications to three pages. And
a dental care program for people with HIV/AIDS SAAF administers for the
state in all counties, except Maricopa and Pinal, was cut 39 percent
this year.
Bart says SAAF clients often walk a fine line, but she’s noticed a
new set of challenges for them have increased this year—many
clients have lost jobs, some are balancing co-pays for medications and
doctors’ visits with rent and utilities, and the organization is seeing
families come in who are or are close to living on the streets.
“If they weren’t living in poverty before they contracted the
disease, many will be, because the medical costs alone are enough to do
that to our clients,” Bart says.
The strategy for the organization is, rather than asking its current
contributors to give more, to reach out to more people in the community
who have never given to SAAF before and ask them to give what they
can—$5, $15 or $20.
For example, at this year’s AIDSWALK on Oct. 11, although the
organization had more people walk this year it didn’t raise any more
than it had in previous years—but at $158,000, it didn’t raise
less, either. (Note: After this story was published, SAAF let us know that while the number of AIDSWALK participants was indeed up this year, the amount of money raised was actually down compared to recent years.)
“Even in bad times the community is generous,” Hicks says, comparing
Tucson to where he lived two years ago working in AIDS care and
prevention in east Texas.
“I asked myself my first year, ‘What is it about this town when
6,000 people come to the AIDS Walk, but Houston gets only 2,000?’
That’s remarkable coming from the South.”
While almost all nonprofit organizations are hurting from the
economy, Hicks and Bart can’t help but wonder why funding for HIV/AIDS
care and prevention is allowed to be cut since the virus’ status as
pandemic hasn’t changed.
Bart says last year the Centers for Disease Control contacted
organizations across the country to admit it made a mistake in tracking
those diagnosed in the United States. In previous years, the CDC
reported 40,000 people were newly diagnosed each year, but the number
is more like 62,000.
“For years, we’ve been receiving federal funding based on those
statistics. And we continue to say, ‘We are seeing new clients, seeing
more clients.’ Every year that client base has grown. There’s not been
a lot of coverage about that particular issue, and they acknowledge it
was their own database system at fault,” Bart says.
According to the Pima County Health Department, more than 2,200
people were diagnosed with HIV last year. Hicks says SAAF and other
organizations that do testing estimate that about a quarter of the
population in Pima County already has HIV, but doesn’t know it because
they haven’t been tested.
While Hicks and Bart meet with other agencies and funding partners
to figure out how to keep their work going without doing more harm to
services, Wymore continues his work at the buyers’ club. A letter was
sent out to the 30 people it helped, but not everyone read it, and
Wymore has had to tell 12 people so far that he can’t give them the
vitamins and nutritional supplements they’ve come to depend on.
Some have purchased what they can, and there are others who weren’t
part of the program who make their purchases through the club because
it is cheaper. The funds from the sales go back to the complementary
therapies program for what can be resuscitated in the future.
“But we’d like to open this up to the community. Since we’re a
nonprofit, we’re tax free. They don’t have to be clients of SAAF,”
Wymore explains.
“If people are looking for one way they can give back, they can do
that right here.”
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.