The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Did Not Award President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief Funds for 2013 in Compliance With Applicable HHS Policies

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not award President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) funds for fiscal year 2013 in compliance with Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and internal policies. For all 30 Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) in our judgmental sample, CDC did not comply with 1 or more HHS or internal policies in some awards.

These instances of noncompliance occurred because CDC did not have effective monitoring in place to ensure that it awarded the Federal grant funds in accordance with HHS and internal policies. As a result, CDC did not always adequately document its funding decisions to award $1.9 billion over the 5-year project period and may have considered applications that it should not have or treated applicants inconsistently.

We recommended that CDC conduct quality assurance reviews of FOAs and funded grant applicant information to monitor compliance with HHS and internal policies when awarding PEPFAR funds. In addition, we recommended that CDC address specific deficiencies that we identified in our review. CDC officials concurred with our recommendations and described corrective actions they had taken or planned to take.