Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2005

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Health, to which was referred S.B. No. 1227 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to appropriate funds to the Department of Health for food, housing, and transportation assistance for HIV/AIDS patients.

Save the FoodBasket, Inc., Life Foundation; Hepatitis Prevention, Education, Treatment, and Support Network of Hawaii; and twelve individuals submitted testimony in support of this measure. The Department of Health submitted testimony in opposition.

Your Committee finds that federal funding through the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act reaches over five hundred thousand individuals each year, making it the federal government's largest program for people living with HIV disease. However, the federal CARE priorities have changed in recent years, leaving many HIV/AIDS patients in Hawaii without adequate food, housing, and transportation services. Programs such as FoodBasket that provide quality, essential nutrition (fresh fruits, produce, dairy, and protein) for people living with HIV, and Gregory House, which provides rent subsidies, are in jeopardy. While people with HIV/AIDS are living longer, many are unable to return to work due to their health and the debilitating side effects of treatment. People living with HIV/AIDS need up to two times the amount of protein and calories in order for them to prevent malnutrition, wasting syndrome, and opportunistic infections. Families and individuals that lose their existing rental subsidies face the risk of homelessness. If homeless, HIV/AIDS patients face additional challenges because many of the related medications need to be refrigerated and taken with food as much as three times a day. An appropriation is needed to ensure that eligible HIV/AIDS patients obtain critical food, housing, and transportation assistance, and that related programs such as FoodBasket and Gregory House will continue.

Upon further consideration, your Committee has amended this measure by changing the findings and purpose section to more accurately reflect a change in the federal CARE priorities and not a decrease in the funding; and by changing the appropriation section to reflect that the funding is for critical food, housing, and transportation assistance to eligible HIV/AIDS patients that is no longer provided for by the CARE Act, and to ensure that related programs such as FoodBasket and Gregory House continue.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Health that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1227, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1227, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.