The act made federal funding available through contingency grants to states for low-income, uninsured, and under-insured people to be treated with the chemotherapeutic drug AZT.

[1] The act is named in honor of Ryan White, an Indiana teenager who contracted HIV through a tainted blood transfusion.

[6] Throughout most of the 2000s, state Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program (RWHAP) Part B programs — ADAPs — were forced to place financially eligible Persons Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) on waiting lists to receive financial assistance to afford medications to treat HIV.

Other states closed registration to new applicants or instituted state-level eligibility guidelines beyond those required by HRSA.

[13] Prior to the reauthorization, the act allocated money based on the proportion of patients with AIDS in each region.

The 2006 reauthorization changed this allocation mechanism to also consider the number of people living with HIV who do not have a clinical diagnosis of AIDS [13] A significant portion of funding from the act is emergency relief for Eligible Metropolitan Areas.

[12] In 2009, Congress passed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act,[14] which was signed by President Obama on October 30, 2009.

[16] In 2013, the Ryan White CARE Act expired; however the Program remains as Congress continues to appropriate funding.