New Media Use at the New York State Department of Health's AIDS Institute

By Miguel Gomez

At the CDC's HIV Prevention Conference last August, I talked with our colleague, Humberto Cruz, about new media and HIV. Humberto is the Director of the AIDS Institute at the New York State Department of Health . I was excited to hear about the AIDS Institute's adoption of new media — they've developed a widget for emergency room providers of post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) and their Disease Information Specialists are taking a lead for online partner notification for STIs. They have also convened a Social Media Workgroup and are developing a comprehensive new media strategy.

Highlights from the 2009 U.S. Conference on AIDS

By Miguel Gomez, Jennie Anderson, Josie Halpern-Finnerty, and Michelle Samplin-Salgado

We just got back from the United States Conference on AIDS (USCA) , sponsored by the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) , and are feeling very energized. There were several themes and key messages that we took away from the conference. The opening plenary, “Transgender People and HIV: Our Time Has Come!” emphasized the importance of better understanding our audiences, specifically the transgender community. We also continued to hear that we need to improve our capacity and reach. And this year there was a new emerging theme - that of new media’s role in the response to HIV. Case in point - at last year’s USCA in Florida, we had seven people attend our new media workshops. This year we had over 150 participants!

JoAnne Keatley , UCSF Center of Excellence for Transgender HIV Prevention delivers the opening plenary remarks at USCA

Making Choices: Create Once, Repurpose Often (Part III)

By David Galiel, AIDS.gov Advisor

In this new media strategy series, I explore ways to develop an effective new media plan that considers available resources, integrates existing services, and uses the right tools for the job. Part I of this series discussed identifying audiences and needs. Part II discussed using an appropriate technology approach to select your new media tools.

Part III: Create Once, Repurpose Often

New media allows us to repurpose existing content, make it available in different forms, and reach our audiences through multiple channels. We can summarize a webinar as a blog post, make it available in an RSS feed or email feed , cross-post it to our Facebook and MySpace pages, and Tweet about it. The slide presentation can be uploaded to SlideShare . We can record the webinar and make it available as a streaming audio or downloadable audio file, along with a text transcript of the webinar. We can read a blog post about the event aloud and include it in a podcast feed . There is a wealth of opportunities to repurpose content created from a single event, potentially reaching a wider audience than we would through one channel.

Making Choices: An Appropriate Technology Approach to New Media (Part II)

By David Galiel, AIDS.gov Advisor

Our “Making Choices” strategy blog series explores ways to develop an effective new media plan that considers available resources, integrates with existing services, and uses the right tools for the job. Part I of this series discussed the first step of designing a new media strategy: identifying audiences and needs.

Part II: How To Choose?
Decision-making processes such as POST can help us to identify audiences, needs, and available resources. However, deciding on what tools to use is still challenging. New technology emerges every day, and the pressure to jump on the latest bandwagon can be strong.

Making Choices: A Strategic Approach to New Media (Part I)

By David Galiel, AIDS.gov Advisor

In this blog, we explore a wide array of new media tools and technologies, and how they can be used in response to HIV/AIDS. From wikis to webinars, video-sharing to virtual worlds, texting to Twitter, the possibilities seem endless, and the next “new thing” is just around the corner. Often, the challenge we face is not the availability of options - it is how to choose. In this occasional strategy series, we explore ways to develop an effective new media plan that considers available resources, integrates with existing services, and uses the right tools for the job.