On April 7, 2009 White House officials teamed up with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to announce a new national domestic HIV/AIDS campaign called Act Against AIDS. This is a campaign we feel you should be aware of.

Act Against AIDS

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) in its study “Estimates of New HIV Infections in the United States, August 2008,” shows that the domestic HIV epidemic is far from over and is worse than previously known. The studies data confirms that the most severe impact is among gay and bisexual men of all races and African American men and women, in particular.

Unfortunately a sense of complacency about the epidemic among individuals and communities throughout the United States appears to be growing. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll found that the percentage of the Americans who say that they are very aware of information about HIV/AIDS in the United States has fallen from 34% five years ago to just 14% today, and the percentage of African Americans reporting this has fallen from 62% to 33%.

Given this new data, Act Against AIDS is intended to address the need for urgency given the decreased attention given to the domestic HIV/AIDS crisis and the complacency that has developed in this country. The campaign recognizes the epidemic is an issue for all people in the United States and that we collectively share a responsibility for stopping this epidemic.

The program will be a 5-year, multi-faceted communication campaign that is will be released in phases. Each phase will have its own unique objectives and target audiences and will utilize mass media and direct-to-consumer communication channels to deliver important HIV prevention messages in a manner designed to be compelling, credible, and relevant. Some campaign phases will influence knowledge and information-seeking behaviors, while other phases will influence complex prevention and testing behaviors.

Nine and a Half Minutes

Every 9 1/2 minutes, another person in the United States becomes infected with HIV. This resulted in over 56,000 new HIV infections in this country in 2006 alone.

The initial phase of the Act Against AIDS campaign, called Nine and a Half Minutes, will raise awareness of the severity of the domestic epidemic and includes a series of video, audio, and print materials the campaign will deliver the simple message that every nine and a half minutes someone in the United States becomes infected with HIV.

A consumer-oriented Web site (www.nineandahalfminutes.org) has been launched and contains resources for individuals and partners who want to use these materials as part of their HIV prevention and awareness efforts.

The Act Against AIDS Leadership Initiative

Africans Americans make up just 12% of the US population, but represented nearly half of the new HIV infections that occurred in 2006 and half of the more than 14,000 AIDS deaths in recent years.

To help ensure the widespread delivery of the campaign messages within African American communities, the CDC is implementing the Act Against AIDS Leadership Initiative (AAALI). This $10 million, five-year partnership with 14 of the nation’s leading organizations serving the African American community seeks to harness the collective strength and reach of traditional, longstanding African American institutions to increase HIV awareness. The AAALI is an outgrowth of CDC’s prevention philosophy of empowering partners to work within their communities.

Partnership with the Kaiser Family Foundation

Because successfully reducing the impact of HIV in the United States will require action from both within and beyond heavily affected African-American communities, the CDC will partner with the Kaiser Family Foundation – a leader in health policy and communications – to enlist support from the media and entertainment industries in broadly disseminating these and other HIV prevention messages.

For More information

The multi-pronged structure of the campaign will enable the CDC to reach multiple and diverse at-risk populations while also working on the national level to raise overall awareness of the HIV epidemic. To find out more about the campaign please visit

www.cdc.gov/hiv/aaa for information about Act Against AIDS

www.nineandahalfminutes.org for information on the 9 1/2 Minutes phase, useful consumer information on the epidemic, what you can do to help end the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and tools you can use to spread the word and participate in the campaign.

As we become informed about the campaign we will post the information on our website.

Please remember that every nine and a half minutes, right here in the United States, someone’s brother, sister, father, mother, friend, co-worker, or neighbor becomes infected with HIV. The knowledge to prevent new HIV infections from occurring exists, we just need to make sure that everyone understands the importance of prevention and the importance of doing their part to stop the spread of HIV.