RESOLUTION TO PROMULGATE AN ORDINANCE ESTABLISHING A CITY OF CHICAGO AFRICAN-AMERICAN HIV/AIDS RESPONSE FUND
WHEREAS, in 2005, the Illinois General Assembly published findings that HIV/AIDS in the African-American community is a crisis separate and apart from the overall issue of HIV/AIDS in other communities; and
WHEREAS, to mitigate this ongoing crisis, the legislature passed Public Act 94-629 that established the African-American HIV/AIDS Response Fund used for grants to programs dedicated to preventing the transmission of HIV in impacted African American communities as well as other programs and activities including, but not limited to, preventing and treating HIV/AIDS, the creation of an HIV/AIDS service delivery system, and the administration ofthe act: and
WHEREAS funding comes from appropriations by the General Assembly, federal funds, and other public resources to provide funding for communities in Illinois to create an HIV/AIDS service delivery system that reduces the disparity of HIV infection and AIDS cases concentrated in impacted African-American neighborhoods; now therefore
BE IT RESOLVED that, since more than 50% of all recently diagnosed cases affect African-American Chicagoans, it is incumbent upon this legislative body to promulgate an ordinance to create a similar fund to set aside and award a majority of funding provided for HIV/AIDS mitigation to agencies who provide such services within communities that have been identified as having the highest concentration of African-Americans living with this disease.
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED when providing grants pursuant to this fund, the Chicago Department of Public Health should give priority to the development of comprehensive medical and social services to African-Americans at risk of infection from or infected with HIV/AIDS in neighborhoods of Chicago determined to have the greatest geographic prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the African-American population.
