10 August 14 - 20, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents ing more about parvo, and there are more limited intakes due to parvo and distemper outbreaks,” Bobosky said. “If [the puppy yoga industry] cares so much about these puppies, they will not continue to put them into these incredibly dangerous situations.” ▼ PUBLIC HEALTH ‘A WAKE UP CALL’ HIV AND STIS COST DALLAS COUNTY NEARLY $400 MILLION. BY ALYSSA FIELDS T he latent effects of the pandemic cre- ated unexpected economic impacts on public health. In a new report, Dal- las County Health and Human Services (DCHHS) unveiled that sexually transmitted infections (STIs) yielded a nearly $400 mil- lion economic impact on the county in 2022, reflecting a worrisome national trend and foreshadowing worsened conditions created by the current administration’s slashing of sexual wellness initiatives and research. “These numbers are a wake-up call,” said Dr. Philip Huang, director of DCHHS, in a press release. “Prevention and early treat- ment aren’t just good medicine — they’re smart economics. Investing in STI preven- tion, early diagnosis, and treatment is both a public health and fiscal imperative.” According to the report, published in the July 2025 Dallas Medical Journal, Dal- las County has the second-highest rate of HIV in the state. The preventable disease accounted for $382.5 million, or 95.9%, of the county’s total economic detriment re- lated to STIs in 2022. Non-HIV costs in the same year accounted for the other $16.1 million. A team of researchers within DCCHS used national care cost averages for STIs in lieu of nonexistent county-specific data. The total direct medical cost estimates in- clude diagnostics, treatment, follow-up , hospitalizations, medications, and long- term care. The report does not include non-monetized indirect costs, resulting in “an underestimation of the total societal burden.” Researchers were unable to aggregate costs by race, gender, socioeconomic status, or geographic location, but they note that these factors are known to impact the total cost of STI treatment and prevention. The DCCHS HIV/STI dashboard tracks cases divisible by a variety of demographics for adequate data collection and targeted pre- vention planning. In 2022, there were 910 new HIV diagno- ses, and 21,000 total positive cases were re- ported within Dallas County. There were 22,000 cases of Chlamydia at 848.7 positive tests per 100,000 people, which is higher than the state average. Syphilis increased by 45% since 2020, and congenital syphilis, transmitted between a mother and a fetus, increased 148% since 2018. HIV, requiring a lifetime of treatment to remain undetectable and untransmitta- ble, beginning with a new diagnosis in 2022, costs $420,000, according to Huang. But several million spent on other pre- ventable diseases requiring much less comprehensive treatment plans is still unignorable. “Gonorrhea is $1.4 million. Chlamydia is almost $3.7 million,” he told the Observer. “This is really costing us a lot. We need to in- vest in trying to prevent this. That’s why it made no sense at all when there was discus- sion, and still it’s out there, of ‘we don’t need to do HIV prevention.’” The Fate of Funding The report trails a pending 2026 federal budget request from the White House that would completely slash HIV prevention and surveillance within the Centers for Disease Control, to- taling $1.5 billion in cuts. Federal grant funding for wellness and public health, particularly focused on STIs, has taken sig- nificant hits, says Huang, partly because of the ongoing budgetary cuts affecting re- search, but also because of the national pushback against DEI programming. Statistically, women and gay men are more susceptible to contracting STIs be- cause of the soft tissue lining within the vag- inal and anal cavities. While STIs are not exclusive to any particular demographic, the unhoused, sex workers, gay men and Black women do have higher rates than other communities, and now, Huang says, the tar- get is on their backs. “There have been concerns because when we look at and address a public health issue, we try to look at who is dis- proportionately affected,” he said. “Some- times now [people are] being labeled as DEI, but we’re just looking at the data and trying to do what needs to be done. And we’re not stopping that. We’re doing what we need to do to try to address these… If those are the populations that are having some of these big problems, then we still need to address them.” Funding isn’t just a problem at the federal level. This year, efforts to increase state funding for STIs, tuberculosis and immuni- zations within local public health depart- ments failed, and Huang says his budget, and other counties’, have remained mostly level for the past decade. “Just for Dallas County, [it cost] $398 mil- lion for one year’s worth of new STIs, and we don’t get nearly that funding,” he said. “We need to invest and do everything we can to prevent these costs and the impact on the lives of these people.” Why Are Preventable Diseases Increasing? The Lone Star State has the highest rate of HIV in the country, and it’s particularly high in Dallas County, trailing only the more pop- ulous Harris County. But rates have been in- creasing across the country for several reasons. “Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is a very large area in one of the largest states in America,” said Steven Tamayo, director of community health for Kind Clinic, an inclu- sive sexual health clinic, to the Observer in March. “And so there’s naturally just more people. More people sometimes means more sex, more sex sometimes means more STIs, and that’s just the natural progression of things.” There was a notable uptick in STIs when widespread social isolation ended, for a cou- ple of reasons, says Huang. “We saw increases in STIs from COVID. We largely thought that it was decreased ac- cess to treatment during COVID… Now, some of the reasons, also more recently, over time, there are social factors that go into this,” he said. “We saw increases of apps, anonymous hookups are easier, that cer- tainly has factored into it.” Huang says the emergence of dating apps and a rampant hookup culture has made contact tracing much more difficult, hampering the usual notification process that is crucial to preventing the spread. “The stigma and shame that are associ- ated with [STIs] prevent people from seek- ing testing or talking about it or getting treated,” he said. “[There’s] reduced access to education. In the criminal justice sector, there are higher rates and addressing those factors, as well as the availability of housing, impacts some of this.” Despite an unknown funding future and a changing social attitude towards proper sexual care, Huang says remaining vigilant about STI prevention, education and acces- sible care is a key concern. “[This has] been a priority, and recog- nized as a priority since I came to the de- partment six years ago,” Dr. Huang said. “We all want a solution. We’ve done a lot of things with HIV in particular.” The city of Dallas is a designated fast- track city within the Paris Declaration, a commitment to accelerate citywide re- sponses to HIV and the AIDs epidemic with the goal of having “90% of people liv- ing with HIV knowing their status, 90% of those positive on treatment, and 90% of those on treatment having suppressed vi- ral loads.” The city is also a member city of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, a federal program that offers financial aid to those, including the underinsured, strug- gling with the costs of comprehensive HIV care. “We have been increasing our services at our sexual health clinic,” said Dr. Huang. “We’ve been doing a lot to address this, and we consider it a very top priority.” ▼ CITY HALL BIG D TAKES ANOTHER L CITY BAN ON SHORT-TERM RENTALS SWATTED DOWN AGAIN. BY EMMA RUBY T here was once a time when it felt like all of City Hall’s energy was being leveled at short-term rentals. Eradi- cating the listing of single-family neighbor- hood homes or mother-in-law suites on websites like Airbnb or VRBO took up hours of council agenda time and community meetings before passing overwhelmingly in June 2023. That ordinance, which would have elimi- nated nearly 95% of Dallas’ short-term rent- als, was set to go into effect in December 2023. Instead, it has spent the last two years tied up in litigation. The two most recent rulings in the case suggest that, despite Dallas’ determination to get rid of most STRs, there may not be a legitimate legal argument to actually implement the policy. The latest development in the case comes from Texas’ 5th District Court of Appeals, which ruled late last month that an injunc- tion on the ban previously issued by a lower court should remain standing while a broader legal challenge is being considered. The ruling was made after the City of Dallas appealed an order upholding the injunction earlier this year. The court sided with vacation rental op- erators who claimed the ordinance passed by the city of Dallas violated their constitu- tional rights as property owners. The court opinion states that the evidence presented in the case “tended to show” that an en- forcement of the ban would deny those rights. In a statement provided to the Observer, the Dallas Short-term Rental Alliance said the coalition is “pleased” with the court’s opinion and wants to return to the table with city leaders to craft a “fair and sensible” regulatory ordinance. “We would welcome moving past the lawsuit and getting to the serious business of putting a reasonable ordinance in place that represents the interests of our mem- bership as well as the neighborhoods in which we live,” the statement said. “Mean- while, we are busy preparing for the 2026 FIFA World Cup and are concentrating on Adobe Stock A lifetime of HIV care costs $420,000 on average. Unfair Park from p8
