Severity of Need: California Health Care Financing and Policy Research Initiative [summary]

The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Modernization Act (a reauthorization of the original Ryan White CARE Act) changed the formulas used to distribute funding to states and cities in the US. The case counts used to allocate the awards shifted from using only AIDS cases to using both HIV (non-AIDS) and AIDS cases. In addition, federal agencies have been charged with developing a Severity of Need Index, which eventually may be used in formula award allocations to weight HIV/AIDS case data by factors thought to impact the variable cost of treatment around the nation. In this project, we have responsibility for developing models that simulate the distribution of formula awards in order to understand how changes to the Ryan White Program formulas impact funding nationwide—and, in particular, California and its cities.