White House, CDC Launch HIV/AIDS Awareness Campaign Online

Yesterday the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a five year “Act Against AIDS” communication campaign, the first domestic HIV/AIDS awareness campaign in more than a decade, to target what officials described as an epidemic of the disease.

While some consider HIV/AIDS to be a disease most commonly found in homosexual communities, minority communities are hugely impacted. Fourteen national African-American organizations participated in today’s announcement and have signed on as partners to spread the message of prevention and testing in the community through the Act Against AIDS Leadership Initiative (AAALI), also announced today by the Obama Administration.

During the live webcast of yesterday’s announcement, Dr. Kevin Fenton, Director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, noted that the campaign will target African Americans for HIV testing.  He also stated future phases will focus on gay and bisexual men and women, the Latino community and other high risk groups. According to a CDC press release issued today, “the next phase to launch will focus on African-Americans, who, by far, bear the greatest burden of HIV in the United States.  While accounting for just 12 percent of the U.S. population, blacks represent roughly half of new HIV infections and AIDS deaths every year.”

According to information on a new website hosted by the CDC, http://www.cdc.gov/nineandahalfminutes, someone is diagnosed with HIV about every nine minutes. The site is full of accessible data about the disease, and much of the information will probably shock many who’ve relegated HIV and AIDS epidemics to in their mind to third world countries.

The campaign is taking full advantage of  social media as well. Twitterers can follow the campaign on the CDC’s account, @CDC_eHealth or the AIDS.gov account at @AIDSgov. Users are also encouraged to retweet often using the #AAAIDS hashtag. Banners, widgets and videos are readily available for download to add to blogs, websites, Facebook, and MySpace pages.

Despite the abundance of facts and figures on all these sites, one of the most compelling messages it contains is also the simplest: “We must recognize the epidemic here, in this country, for the crisis that it still is.” With this line its seems like the administration is ready for all of us to grow up regarding our attitudes about HIV and AIDS. Instead of continuing to bury heads in the sand, we’re being led to take responsibility for ourselves and each other, and we have a some help in the form of these easy to use tools stop being scared and start taking action.

About the Author
Lesly Simmons is a freelance writer and interactive communications and events specialist based in San Francisco, California.
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