In 2003, President George W. Bush introduced the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program that has allocated more than $25 billion to fight HIV/AIDS around the globe. As commentators across the political spectrum have suggested, the program has improved prevention, treatment, and care efforts, making a tangible and significant difference in the lives of countless people living with HIV and AIDS.

But despite the many positive interventions that PEPFAR has made, it has also ignored or adversely affected some communities, including many LGBT populations. In a new report, How Ideology Trumped Science: Why PEPFAR Has Failed to Meet its Potential, Scott H. Evertz describes the ways in PEPFAR has fallen short of its promise and offers substantive recommendations to improve the program. Evertz, the former director of President Bush's Office of National AIDS Policy, details why it is important that PEPFAR be grounded in science rather than ideology, and how the program can better assist LGBT populations and other underserved groups.

With a preface written by Cary Alan Johnson, Executive Director of IGLHRC and the author of Off the Map: How HIV Programs are Failing Same-Sex Practicing People in Africa, the report provides a useful analysis of PEPFAR and ways it can be improved to serve all populations affected by HIV and AIDS. The report is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the inclusion of men who have sex with men, women who have sex with women, and LGBT communities, and is available to download or read at the Center for American Progress and the Council for Global Equality.

Download: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/01/pdf/pepfar.pdf
CAP: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/01/pepfar.html
CGE: http://www.globalequality.org/