As HIV diagnoses go up in metro Atlanta, the number of dollars backing research and treatment for the disease is going down.

Clinics in metro Atlanta that have served HIV patients for years are losing funding due to the federal grant cuts by the Trump administration, creating a situation that public health practitioners say will push people out of care.

The cuts are part of a push by the administration to slash millions of dollars of funding for federal diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, including $784 million to the National Institutes of Health.

Living with hope after an HIV diagnosis

Barry Sermons doesn't look like the typical student on Georgia State's campus. 

"I am a film and media major. Forty years after being out of school, it was time to go back," Sermons said.

Sermons says he's studying film because he wants to tell stories about the challenges of life. One of those challenges: a positive diagnosis that was a death sentence for many just decades ago.

In 2003, Sermons was talked into a free test at a health fair. It was there that he learned he was HIV positive.

"Otherwise, I would've never been tested," he said.

Free clinics around metro Atlanta continued to help Sermons.

"I was able to go see doctors, and I was able to get my medications," he said. "So those things really saved my life."

Doctors concerned over grant cuts

Dr. Daniel Driffin has seen the impact of the cuts firsthand on clinics and patients.

"We have roughly 18-20,000 people living with HIV in the Atlanta metropolitan area," Driffin said. "There's different programs that provide free healthcare services that are truly on the verge of being wiped away."

The constant changes in funding as the fight over the cuts went through the legal system have left the future in doubt for clinics across Georgia, he said.

"This turbulence within the system of being defunded, having money, the money being delayed—all of that ultimately creates additional barriers and it pushes people out of care and keeps them from being the healthiest they can be," Driffin said. 

"Now people are unable to be tested. They won't be treated. They won't have the opportunity to become what we call 'undetectable,' and in order to eradicate the disease, we need the population to be tested, to know they have the status, to be on treatment, taking the medications, and then to become undetectable," Sermon said.

The White House's fiscal budget for next year eliminates funding for the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's HIV prevention and tracking programs. 

The cuts total over $1.5 billion. 

Still, Sermon believes there is hope to get numbers down through community connections and with projects like the films he's learning to make at Georgia State.

"We can take care of our own village. Now we may not have the funding we need, but if we learn how to support each other and take each other along, then we can keep the virus and the spread at bay," he said.