PEPFAR: The life-saving program that 75% of Americans still agree on

By Gabriel Salguero, Op-ed Contributor Wednesday, May 13, 2026

There are moments when a nation reveals what it truly believes — not in speeches, but in what it’s willing to sustain when it would be easier to turn inward.

Today is one of those moments.

At a time when American families are feeling the strain of rising costs, uncertainty, and an ever-changing world, something remarkable has emerged: an overwhelming, bipartisan commitment to continue one of the most life-saving efforts in modern history. 

A recent poll by McLaughlin & Associates shows that nearly three-quarters of likely voters support continued funding for PEPFAR — the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — with strong bipartisan backing and overwhelming agreement that America should keep its promise to end the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

This is the moral clarity foundational to what it means to be American. 

For Evangelicals, this shouldn’t surprise us. Scripture doesn’t ask us to love in abstraction. It commands us to bind up wounds, to defend the vulnerable, to care for the orphan and the widow, and to refuse the temptation to look away when suffering becomes inconvenient. The Gospel doesn’t permit a calculus that weighs human life against economic anxiety and chooses retreat. It calls us outward.

And yet, what is striking is not just that people of faith believe this — but that the American people, across party, region, and ideology, recognize it.

Even more telling: 80% of Americans agree that life-saving treatment should be grounded in the moral principle of saving a life, not judging a person’s choices. This isn’t a progressive or conservative ethic. It is a Christian one. It is the ethic of Christ drawing near to the suffering, refusing to let condemnation have the final word.

This is why the inclusion of explicit faith-based partnership language in the House FY27 National Security and Related Programs report matters so deeply.

This is a critical recognition that faith-based organizations are not peripheral actors in global health. In communities in Africa and around the world, it’s often the Church that shows up first, stays longest, and is trusted most to provide clinical and pastoral care. 

And the American people understand this. Nearly eight in 10 Americans say it’s important for the United States to work with faith-based organizations to deliver HIV/AIDS care. They understand something Washington often forgets — that trust is infrastructure. That love, embodied through faithful presence, is often the difference between a program that exists and one that endures.

PEPFAR is, at its core, a covenant.

A covenant between the United States and the world’s most vulnerable. A covenant that says we will not abandon you because your suffering is far away. A covenant that says American leadership is measured not only in strength, but in mercy. A covenant that has already saved more than 25 million lives — and has the capacity to save millions more.

To break that covenant would not simply be a policy failure. It would be a moral one.

And Americans know it. By a wide margin, Americans say they are more likely to support policymakers who uphold this commitment — and less likely to support those who would walk away from it. In a fractured political environment, this is rare terrain: a place where moral conviction and political incentives align.

But for people of faith, the motivation runs deeper still. We do not sustain PEPFAR because it polls well. We sustain it because every life preserved bears the image of God. 

Because every child born HIV-free is a testimony that suffering doesn’t have the final word.

Because every mother who lives to raise her child is a quiet miracle of provision and mercy.

Because to turn away now — after decades of investment, progress, and trust — would not only cost lives but erode the very witness we are called to carry.

The NSRP report gets something right that we must not lose, that the future of global health is not built on transactions but on relationships and the enduring legacy of America’s covenant with the most vulnerable.

At a time when the world is asking what kind of nation America will be, the answer is not found in rhetoric alone. It is found in whether we keep our promises, especially to those who have no power to compel us to do so.

The American people have spoken with unusual unity that we are still a nation willing to lead, serve, and love.