April 6^th, 2011

This year, CDC will commemorate 30 years of fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States. To highlight our collective progress and examine existing challenges, CDC is launching an online community that will serve as an information and communication portal. Here, we invite you to share your voice to remind us of the accomplishments, inspire one another with stories of perseverance and success, and position ourselves and our work for the road ahead.

This unique social networking community will allow members to share events, stories, photos, videos, and much more from the past 30 years. Many of us have been personally affected by HIV/AIDS over the past 3 decades, from receiving a diagnosis, to living with HIV or AIDS, to caring for a friend or family member with the disease. Our personal stories speak of challenges, but they also speak of hope. Please share your personal story with us and with others who have become a part of this epidemic’s history.

Furthermore, some of us have worked in HIV since its beginning 30 years ago—in clinics, community organizations, the hardest-hit areas, health departments, and federal agencies. Some of us have more recently enlisted in this fight. But all of us have had moments that defined our work and our dedication to reducing the burden of HIV and AIDS. Please join the online community and share your defining moment in HIV prevention.

The Web community features a calendar of events and host guest bloggers ranging from CDC leaders to community activists and partners in our collective struggle to end the epidemic. We encourage you to spend some time in this section of the portal and invite you to respond to blog posts with memories, lessons learned, or words of encouragement. To further commemorate the first reported case of AIDS, CDC will convene the lecture series, “HIV/AIDS: 30 Years of Leadership and Lessons” moderated conversations with leaders describing defining moments that changed the course of the epidemic. The series will begin early June 2011 and run through the final day of the CDC’s National HIV Prevention Conference, which will be held August 14-17 in Atlanta. The conference will provide another opportunity to look back at the successes and challenges of the first 30 years of the epidemic, the lessons learned, and how we can apply these lessons today to have an even greater effect on the HIV epidemic.

Once you are a member of the online community, you can connect with colleagues past and present, meet new friends, honor loved ones affected by HIV or AIDS, and remember those who died from the disease. We have made significant progress, but much more remains to be done.

Sign up and share your personal and professional stories of hope, photographs of triumph, and videos of the journey.

Click here to register for the community, and begin sharing your story.

You may also sign up for the community by using you Facebook, Twitter, Google, or Yahoo login information.