Barbara Lee Questions Leavitt on Funding for Health Disparities & Abstinence Only Programs
Press Release
For Immediate Release: February 27, 2008
Contact: Cleve Mesidor, (202) 225-2661
(Washington, DC) – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (CA-9), who serves on the House Appropriations Committee’s on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Subcommittee, today questioned HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt during a subcommittee hearing on the FY2009 budget. She told Secretary Leavitt that Congress deserves answers as to why the Administration’s budget fails yet again to prioritize funding to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities or encourage greater funding for students in minority health professions.
She also expressed concern in written testimony entered into the record with the Administration’s request for increased funding for ineffective abstinence only education programs.
The following are excerpts from Congresswoman Lee’s prepared statement:
Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities:
Budgets are moral documents because they reflect our moral priorities. But once again, the President has proven that his moral priorities are completely out of whack, especially on the issue of racial and ethnic health disparities.
Your testimony makes no mention of the need to address racial and ethnic health disparities. In fact, President Bush has proposed zeroing out critical programs that can help reduce these disparities or even increase the number of qualified minority health professionals. It is irresponsible that these critical programs include the Minority Centers of Excellence account, the Health Careers Opportunity Programs and Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students, which will eliminate support for 8,260 underrepresented minority students.
But according to your own Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, racial and ethnic health disparities are observed in almost all aspects of healthcare.
The fact is that this administration is again willing to try and balance the budget on the backs of those who are most vulnerable in our society. Those who suffer are inevitably the poor, communities of color and women. That is just coldblooded.
Community Based Abstinence Education Programs:
Secretary Leavitt, I’m disappointed to see that once again the President has requested an increase in funding for abstinence only education programs of nearly $28 million within the Administration for Children and Families, despite study after study after study proving that abstinence-only programs are completely ineffective.
Even more incomprehensible, the President has zeroed out funding for programs that provide viable alternatives. Yet your own department, just last year, released the results of a multi-year, randomized, controlled evaluation of abstinence only programs – and found that these programs were completely ineffective in encouraging participants to abstain from sex, reduce the age of sexual debut, reduce their number of partners or reduce reported rates of pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections. Abstinence only programs just don't work.
The science does not support funding for abstinence only programs, and states around the country continue to reject abstinence funding from the federal government because they want to teach comprehensive sex ed.
Instead of continued funding for abstinence only programs we should be funding comprehensive sex education.
Major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Society for Adolescent Medicine, the American Nurses Association, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Public Health Association, have strongly endorsed comprehensive sex education programs that include information about abstinence and contraception as the best way to prevent teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STI’s), including HIV/AIDS.
When it comes to abstinence programs we need to get real, and pass my bill the REAL act to teach comprehensive sex education programs.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee 9CA-9) is Co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and sits on the House Appropriations Committee, where she serves on the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Subcommittee, the State Foreign Operations Subcommittee and is Vice-Chair of the Legislative Branch Subcommittee. She co-authored legislation creating the framework for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria in 2000, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in 2003.
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