Using New Media to Act Against AIDS

Every 9½ minutes someone in the U.S. is infected with HIV. That’s the message behind a national campaign that was announced today by officials from the White House, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the CDC.

Act Against AIDS is a new five-year national communication campaign that will highlight this alarming statistic and attempt to combat complacency about the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States. The campaign is using both traditional channels (e.g., radio and transit ads) and new media tools (e.g., widgets, Web badges, online videos, Twitter, blogs, social networking sites) to reach a broad audience and to target at-risk populations.

Jesse Milan, Jr., JD, Black AIDS Institute , Beny J. Primm, M.D. from Addiction Research and Treatment Corporation , and Miguel Gomez, AIDS.gov

Kevin Fenton, M.D., Director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention explained: “Reducing the disproportionate toll of HIV in Black communities is one of CDC’s top domestic HIV-prevention priorities, and African American leaders have long played an essential role in this fight.” Fenton also said “This new initiative will further harness the collective strength of some of the nation’s leading African American organizations to reach directly into the communities they serve with critical, life-saving information.”

To harness that collective strength, this campaign is using new media tools to spread the message. We’ll blog about this campaign in the future, to explore how our colleagues are using new media and to get a sense of how effective those tools are. Help us share this important message! Visit the campaign’s website at www.nineandahalfminutes.org .

How You Can Help

Web Badge—Promote HIV awareness by adding an Act Against AIDS Web badge to your website. Just copy the html code below and paste it into your site.

<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nineandahalfminutes/?s_cid=actagainstaids_003" title="Every 9&frac12; minutes someone in the US is infected with HIV. Act Against AIDS."><img src="http://www.cdc.gov/images/campaigns/actagainstaids/9andahalfmins_300x250.jpg" width="300" height="250" border="0" alt="Every 9½ minutes someone in the US is infected with HIV. Act Against AIDS."></a>

Link to the 9½ minute website from your homepage—Suggested text: White House Announces New National HIV/AIDS Communication Campaign: www.nineandahalfminutes.org

Blog about the event or campaign, or read Federal blogs about the campaign—Kevin Fenton will be blogging, as will AIDS.gov.

Twitter—If you are on Twitter, please follow and re-tweet from the CDC Twitter account or from the AIDS.gov Twitter account .

• All tweets related to this event should use a standard hashtag for the event (#AAAIDS).
• All tweets will reference other organizations (with @) as appropriate.
• If possible, refer followers to www.nineandahalfminutes.org , 1-800-CDC-INFO, or cdcinfo@cdc.gov for additional information.
• Try to limit tweets to 120 characters, including the #AAAIDS hashtag, to promote re-tweeting.

Watch the White House webcast and link to it—Watch for the webcast of the event on the AIDS.gov homepage.

Link to PSAs and podcasts—PSAs and podcasts of the event will be available on both the HHS and CDC Youtube channels , but you can go to www.nineandahalfminutes.org to link or view.

Comments

[fas]

That is a pretty high frequency. US aside, can you tell the statistics for the whole world? And also Africa, because Africa is the most affected by HIV and AIDS.

[Brad]

Another way of getting the word out would be to engage in facebook groups, myspace groups,yahoo groups etc. to weed your way into these groups to spread the word. Also using pay per click advertising through these sites will also help.

[Sara]

I think you need to be more, way more aggressive on this subject.

When I was going to school, my parents made me watch a PBS movie about people on drugs. I made my friends watch it with me...the results...none of us ever, EVER took drugs. It left us with a deep regard of what we might go through if we did start taking drugs.

The movie showed what people looked like after the body started rebelling about the drugs the person used. It showed men and women bloated to the point they couldn’t move, is showed the infections in the track marks down the arms and behind the ears, it showed how these men and women looked just before they died and it showed them dying and dead.

The movie was a documentary, I don’t even remember who made it, but my point is if the kids these days saw a movie of AIDS patients from the beginning to the end, they would think twice or three times about sleeping around thinking they’re not going to get HIV/AIDS.

One of the problems of the USA is we are babied by the media. We don’t see the blood shed, bombing victims, or any of the bad “stuff” in life so we always think it’s not going to affect us so we can do it. Young people are the worst for thinking this...I say show them what really happens to people with AIDS...they will think twice about “doing it”.

Sara

[junior]

woo every 9½ minutes someone in the U.S. is infected with HIV? i thought that Africa is the main continent facing this big problem! I think that i should blog about this. If everybody could blog about Aids people will be more aware about the danger! some are still saying that Aids is just a scam or a conspiracy of the gov to sell condoms

[Ralph DeLuca]

That is a frightening statistic for this day and age. Hopefully the evolution of the web can help spread the word much better that it has been.

Ralph DeLuca
Madison, NJ

[Dave]

This article has really opened my eyes to the subject. I was not aware that the numbers were that high especially in the U.S.A.