By Carl W. Dieffenbach, Ph.D., Director of NIAID Division of AIDS
Last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that the number of annual new HIV infections in the United States is actually 40% higher than previously estimated. This means that more than 56,000 Americans are infected with HIV every year despite public education efforts on how to avoid getting infected. Addressing the global HIV/AIDS pandemic is critical, but it’s clear that we need to re-examine our approaches and figure out additional ways to control and curtail the epidemic here in the United States.
At the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the NIH, we stand at the forefront of the nation’s HIV prevention research efforts. One of our goals is to develop new scientific strategies to prevent HIV transmission. We've had our share of successes and disappointments, like all areas of science, but we remain optimistic and are committed to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Continue reading "Testing HIV Drugs as Prevention" »
By Jennie Anderson
Last week Miguel Gomez and I joined 1,000 other public health, social marketing, new media, health education, and health communications leaders at the CDC's 3rd annual National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media in Atlanta. We enjoyed having this opportunity to learn from colleagues (new and old), and present on some of our own new media lessons learned, as we did in past years attending this conference. I presented on a panel with some of our CDC colleagues about user-generated content , highlighting some of our experiences from World AIDS Day and National HIV Testing Day, and Miguel gave a presentation about our AIDS.gov new media strategy .
Continue reading ""Participation Powers Prevention": Highlights from CDC's 3rd National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media" »
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is working hard to inform the public about how to prepare for and prevent H1N1 flu.
We wanted to highlight a few new media tools that HHS is using to ensure public engagement and move information quickly.
Continue reading "H1N1 Preparedness, New Media and HIV/AIDS" »
By Michelle Samplin-Salgado
At AIDS.gov, we work with HIV organizations from all over the country (and sometimes the world!). Often it’s not possible to sit at the same table so we rely on virtual ways to connect. Webcasts, web conferences, and webinars are ways to connect with each other and efficiently share information in cyberspace. These terms are still emerging and are commonly used imprecisely. To make matters more confusing, “web conferencing” is often also used generically, to describe the online technology used by all three forms of communication. If you are considering any of these tools, it might be helpful to think in terms of what you are trying to accomplish, the size and type of your audience, and the need for reusability/later viewing.
Continue reading "The Conference Comes to You: Webcasts, Web Conferences, and Webinars" »