Joseph F. O’Neill is moving from the White House “AIDS czar” slot to the State Department to become Deputy Coordinator and Chief Medical Officer of the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator. He will be the number two man at the agency that was created recently to run the government’s international AIDS efforts. The announcement came in an Aug. 14 press release.

It was barely a year ago that O’Neill went to what is officially called the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP), replacing Scott Evertz, who many viewed as ineffective. Both are openly gay and O’Neill is in a 14-year relationship.

O’Neill was the first physician to work at ONAP and appears to have won the confidence of President Bush.

O’Neill is a career civil servant who received his medical training at the University of California San Francisco and holds degrees in business administration and public health from the University of California at Berkeley. He served as medical director of the Chase Brexton Clinic, which was established to serve the gay and lesbian community and has evolved to become a large provider of AIDS services in Baltimore.

O’Neill was the chief administrator of the Ryan White program, which then distributed $1.7 billion in federal funds for AIDS services. Under Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, O’Neill moved downtown to HHS headquarters to serve as acting director of the Office of HIV/AIDS Policy, and then to the White House.

“We are sad to see him leave the White House, because of his expertise,” said Scott Brawley, director of public policy at the AIDS Action Council. “But we know he will do a great job” on the international side.

Some in the community fear that interest in the international fight against AIDS is coming at the expense of domestic activities and that the administration may try to eliminate ONAP. But Brawley said that his conversations with O’Neill do not lead him to believe that will happen. AIDS Action hopes that O’Neill’s successor will bring a similar level of experience and competence to that office.

“There is some speculation that Joe [O’Neill] will keep the ONAP title in addition to the Global” title, said Terje Anderson, executive director of the National Association of People With AIDS (NAPWA). “I hope that they don’t try to split him between that and ONAP because both are full time jobs.”

O’Neill’s acting successor at the HHS Office of HIV/AIDS Policy is Christopher Bates, another gay man, African-American, and a low-key career civil servant who knows how Washington operates. Talk had been that he might move over to ONAP as O’Neill’s deputy.

When asked if he was packing his bags to move to the White House, Bates replied cryptically, “I’ve been eyeing my bags.”

Few Republicans have the necessary background to head up ONAP, as Evertz’s appointment more than two years ago demonstrated. That was part of the reason why the administration went with O’Neill, and perhaps is considering Bates.