San Francisco Chronicle - March 9, 2007
Sabin Russell, srussell@sfchronicle.com.

Jimmy Loyce, who has been director of the office for seven years, announced this week that he will step down from his $160,000-a-year post on May 1, and that no one will be named to replace him.

Loyce, 58, said that the restructuring of the office is the final step in a process that has been going on for several years. For instance, the fiscal functions of the office were integrated into the health department's financial branch last year. Loyce said the changes will not cause a downsizing of the staff. "There are about 170 employees, and with me gone, there will be 169," he said.

There are no immediate plans to move the various Office of AIDS functions from its headquarters at 25 Van Ness Ave. Eventually, the department is expected to consolidate a wide variety of functions scattered throughout the city into larger, more efficient facilities.

"It's the right time for me to leave," said Loyce, who began working on the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco in 1981, and has run the AIDS office since 2000. He expects to continue participating in long-range planning for HIV services in the city.

The office is responsible for about $65 million in AIDS programs, much of them paid for by federal grants. Although catastrophic cuts in Ryan White Care Act funding have been averted, Loyce said the city expects to lose $1.5 million from built-in reductions in each of the next three years. At the same time, the number of people living with HIV in the city continues to grow, as drugs keep patients alive, and about 900 new infections are found each year.

There are currently nearly 9,000 people in the city living with an AIDS diagnosis, and 6,400 living with HIV that has not progressed to AIDS.

The greatest impetus for folding the Office of AIDS into the rest of the health department, however, is that the patients who have HIV are living longer and face the same kinds of chronic health problems as other aging populations. They have serious health problems, but not necessarily uniquely HIV-related diseases. For years, the city has been trying to seamlessly provide all the health services these patients need, and now the bureaucracy for prevention and care of HIV is being similarly mainstreamed.

Mark Cloutier, executive director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said the integration of the Office of AIDS into the rest of the city health department makes sense. "It's important that people get care for other chronic diseases at the same place they get HIV care," he said.

The integration of the Office of AIDS into the day-to-day operations of the rest of the health department, he said, presents an opportunity for Mayor Gavin Newsom and health director Dr. Mitch Katz to come up with a more efficient way of delivering care to people with HIV who have other medical problems.

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