The nationally known Howard Brown Health Center will pay back $715,000 to federal agencies to settle claims the health clinic misspent federal research grant money, CEO Jamal Edwards announced.
The deal comes two years after the health clinic network announced the federal Department of Health and Human Services was investigating Howard Brown officers’ use of federal money from a grant for an HIV/AIDS study to pay for the agency’s operating costs.
“This is all behind us now,” said Edwards, who took the helm of the health clinic network in 2010, after allegations of misspending became public. The Uptown-based health clinic was founded in 1974 and provides health care and research primarily focused on the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender community.
Edwards said the agency has boosted fundraising efforts since he came aboard and was able to repay the money with revenues from its charity resale shops and clinical and pharmaceutical operations. Edwards said the federal grant money was used to pay operating costs for Howard Brown, a violation of federal law
Under terms of the settlement, Howard Brown will immediately send $53,924 to the Centers for Disease Control and $86,076 to Health Resources and Services Administration, and will repay a total of $575,000 to the National Institutes of Health over three years.
The total settlement of $715,000 is less than $1 million that was misspent from 2005 to 2010, and federal authorities could have demanded more than $3 million in total fines and interest, Edwards noted.
“The fact they were willing to accept less than they were owed is a really strong statement that we have been open and transparent,” Edwards said.
A spokesman for the NIH on Monday confirmed a settlement had been reached, but could not comment immediately on the terms.
The funding struggles that led to the misuse of funds never disrupted Howard Brown’s ability to provide services and led to no disruption in the research studies including the Multi-Center AIDS Cohort Study, which has tracked thousands of men infected with HIV since the mid-1980s, Edwards said. Howard Brown has continued to participate in federal research programs, and the agency has already applied for new funding, Edwards said.
“We are looking forward to moving on to new efforts,” he said.