The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ( HHS ) pulled a promised $85,000 grant for Healing Works, almost scuttling the national lesbian health conference before it took place.
The Office of Women's Health at HHS had put money into their budget for the conference and The Mautner Project bid on the request for a proposal ( RFP ) , a standard process with government funding.
Kathleen DeBold, executive director of The Mautner Project, explained the machinations of how the RFP was withdrawn and a second issued and then withdrawn before she was told by HHS official Cristina Beato that the conference "did not fit into [ Secretary Tommy Thompson's ] vision for women's health. He wants to fund inclusive conferences."
DeBold noted that that "vision" did not preclude HHS from funding youth conferences, women of color conferences, and Native American conferences. She said they tried to work through the national gay political groups and through former AIDS "czar" Scott Evertz and eventually were told that each had run into a brick wall.
"I'm mad. I'm just mad about what is going on in the federal government," Suzanne Haynes, MD, executive director for science in the Office of Women's Health at HHS, told the conference.
"We went all the way up to the Secretary's office," Haynes said. Her boss, Dr. Wanda Jones, "used every chit she had to overturn the decision to cancel the $85,000 contract for this conference," but she failed.
They ended up getting the money "through the back door," in smaller bits and pieces from the CDC, National Cancer Institute, and other parts of HHS farther removed from the Secretary's office. That funded travel fellowships for some of the attendees and speakers.
"If we have to fund the conference without using the word lesbian in it, we will, because the most important thing is to get you all the money to do the work," said Haynes. "We are going to have to do it by using other names, like healing works or removing the barriers. I love 'two-spirits' because it's like a faith-based initiative."
DeBold told the conference, "Unofficially [ Haynes ] is a watchdog inside the system, making things as fair and equal as she possible can, putting herself personally and professionally at risk by always saying, what about people who are left out, whoever those people are."
"The good news is that they are not touching NIH," said Haynes. About 20 grants, totaling $15 million over the next four years, already are funded and another six will be funded by the end of the year. "I just can't say how exciting that is."