Pubdate: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 Source: Daily Camera (CO) Copyright: 2002 The Daily Camera. Contact: http://www.thedailycamera.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/103 Author: Chris Barge Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?143 (Hepatitis) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange) NEEDLE PROGRAM MAY KEEP FUNDS Opposition To Cuts Appears To Persuade Health Board Halona Donaghy is the kind of woman a heroin user can relate to. "I have used drugs in every major city in the United States and Canada," she told the Boulder County Board of Health at a study session Monday. "I never found a place that made me feel important until I moved here." For six years, Donaghy has volunteered for the Boulder County needle exchange program, getting drug users clean needles and telling them how to get tested for disease. She and almost 20 other volunteers, disease prevention workers and concerned residents gathered at the health department to protest a proposal to cut all three of the program's outreach workers. It worked. "Find another way," board member Bill Marine told county Health Department Director Chuck Stout. Stout had proposed laying off all three needle exchange outreach workers as part of an effort to cut $437,000 from the department's budget. The health board has until its July 8 meeting to decide how to respond to Gov. Bill Owens' line-item veto of $46 million from next year's $13.8 billion state budget. In all, Stout's proposal would have met the new budget by cutting 14 positions, resulting in as many as six layoffs. Stout proposed retaining only the needle exchange program's manager and leaving it with a $50,000 operating budget. The $100,000 annual cost-saving measure, according to Marine, would have put the program "on life support." The board directed Stout to return on July 8 with a proposal that perhaps uses department reserves to keep the program running with at least one outreach worker until a better long-term solution can be found. The board gave its support for the other layoffs and staff shuffling that Stout proposed for the department. Since 1989, many say, "the Works" needle exchange program has become a poster child for effective AIDS and Hepatitis C prevention and education for the country. It has done that by forging a relationship with Boulder County's 1,000 injection drug users - a population constantly on the move. "Do not lose contact with this population, period, because you will lose them and will not find them," said Paul Simons, former director of a Denver outreach program for injection drug users. News of the proposed layoffs spread from coast to coast over the weekend, and experts in the field responded. Marine received e-mails bemoaning the proposal from the Institute for AIDS Research in New York, the director of Urban Health Studies at the University of California at San Francisco, a Boulder behavioral scientist working in Denver for the Center for Disease Control and the director of the Harm Reduction Coalition in New York City. The Board of Health generally approved of the other proposed layoffs and staff re-assignments. The other recommendations were the following: Lay off one half-time behavioral health administrative coordinator, a 3/4-time immunization clerk, a half-time tuberculosis outreach worker, and a half-time early periodic screening diagnosis and treatment outreach worker. Eliminate the position of health planning and epidemiology coordinator, vacated last week by Dennis Lenaway. Also eliminate the environmental health specialist position, which was vacated earlier this year. Reduce the on-call immunization nursing staff. Redirect some portion of work to bioterrorism preparedness from positions of health planning and epidemiology program support, communicable disease control/occupational health nurse, on-call immunization nursing staff, and communicable disease control specialist. The Board of Health will take a final vote on the budget cuts July 8. After that, the Board of County Commissioners will consider every department's cuts in the county for approval.