The Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) advises the White House and the Secretary of Health and Human Services on the US government's response to the AIDS epidemic. The commission was formed by President Bill Clinton in 1995 and each president since has renewed the council's charter.[1]
The Council was not the first presidential inquiry into HIV. In 1987, Ronald Reagan appointed the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic (1987–88) to investigate the AIDS epidemic. This was followed by the National Commission on AIDS (1989–1993).[citation needed]
Six members resigned in protest of President Donald Trump's health policies in June 2017,[2] and the remaining ten members were dismissed by Trump on 28 December 2017. While PACHA did not meet in 2018, it was restaffed in 2019[3] and reconvened in March, June, and October 2019.[4][5]
As of the end of the Biden administration in January 2025, PACHA's website listed 32 members and five staff.[6] Trump took office on January 20, and five days later, Senate committee hearings began regarding his nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services.[7][8] On February 1, all the PACHA member and staff names were removed from the website.[9][10] The Senate confirmed Kennedy to the position on February 13.[11] He swiftly fired ten thousand federal health employees, resulting in the closure of the Office of Infectious Diseases & HIV Policy, which had supported PACHA.[12]
On Dec. 11, 2018, Secretary Alex Azar of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services nominated Carl Schmid and John Weisman to serve as PACHA co-chairs [13] when the council reconvened on March 14–15, 2019.[14] Schmid is deputy executive director of The AIDS Institute, and a longtime leader and activist on HIV issues.[15] Weisman is the secretary of health for Washington state and past president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers.[16]
At that time, the PACHA members were:[17]
Through 2018, the HIV.gov website (run by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services) was not updated and continued to display two previous PACHA staff: B. Kaye Hayes, MPA, executive director, and Caroline Talev, MPA, public health analyst.[18]
Critics have said they lack confidence in PACHA and note that the council as reorganized under President Bush held only two meetings in 2002 and issued only five recommendations to the White House. By comparison, the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic (Watkins Commission) submitted 597 recommendations to the Reagan Administration.
The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report in February 2004 entitled Scientific Integrity in Policymaking that said that President Bush intentionally appointed under-qualified individuals to PACHA as part of a broader effort to manipulate the government's scientific advisory system by providing the appearance of expert advice while controlling the advice given.
Critics pointed to the appointment of Dr. Joseph McIlhaney, a Texas-based doctor known for rejecting the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases and for his advocacy of abstinence-only programs despite negligible evidence that they reduce pregnancy rates among young people.
Six members of the committee resigned in June 2017, citing as the reason that the president, "has no strategy to address the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic, seeks zero input from experts to formulate HIV policy, and—most concerning—pushes legislation that will harm people living with HIV and halt or reverse important gains made in the fight against this disease". In December 2017 Trump dismissed all the remaining 16 members. Gabriel Maldonado, a former member of PACHA, said in a Washington Post article "Like any administration, they want their own people there," identifying "ideological and philosophical differences" and that many of the remaining members, including her, were appointed by former president Barack Obama. "I was co-chair of the disparities committee," Maldonado added, "so much of my advocacy and policy references surrounded vulnerable populations, addressing issuing of diverse communities, specifically looking at the impacts of the LGBT community, namely, the disproportionate impact of HIV and AIDS to people of color, gay men, transgender women...and a lot of those key vulnerable populations are not being prioritized in this administration." Newsweek stated that there were fears that "the charter for PACHA will be re-written with renewed focus on abstinence and religious, non-evidence based public health approaches."[20]