Blog.AIDS.gov

Facing AIDS for World AIDS Day 2009: How You Can Take Action with One Photo

2009-11-10T17:33:00-05:00

By Jennie Anderson and Josie Halpern-Finnerty

Tree Alexander at USCA

If a picture says a thousand words, how much would a picture of you wearing a red ribbon and holding a sign that says you're "Facing AIDS for World AIDS Day" say? Could it help end stigma? Promote HIV testing? We think so - and we need your help.

Last week at the U.S. Conference on AIDS, we kicked off the relaunch of our Facing AIDS for World AIDS Day campaign. Hundreds of you stopped by our photo booth and told us why you are Facing AIDS. In doing so, you are helping to reduce stigma around HIV by putting real faces to the people who care about responding to HIV, and by helping to promote HIV testing. We first launched this campaign last year for the 20th World AIDS Day and given how many of you responded, we're doing it again this year and taking it to the next level.

Here's how you can get involved in three easy steps:

Grab the badge

Take a Photo

Download a Facing AIDS sign (PDF, 157 KB) and write a message on it that says why you are Facing AIDS.
Then take a photo of yourself wearing a red ribbon with your sign.
Upload it to our Flickr group and/or our Facebook fan page (in addition to the Flickr group, we'll be making a video of select images from the Facing AIDS campaign for you to share!).

Change your Social Network Profile Picture and Status. On December 1 change your social network profile picture to your Facing AIDS photo and your status to:

“[Your Name] is Facing AIDS for World AIDS Day. To find an HIV test site, text your ZIP to “KNOWIT” (566948), or visit www.HIVtest.org . Join me and post this to your status today.”
Share

Ask your family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors to join the Campaign—here's a flyer you can share. (PDF, 8.5 MB).
Add a Facing AIDS web badge to your profile, blog or website.

You can also check out and share this video about how to take part in the Facing AIDS campaign. The video features Tree Alexander from Brooklyn, New York, and AIDS.gov Director Miguel Gomez. Tree told us he chose to get involved with the Facing AIDS campaign because, "I felt the need to join to help spread awareness. I felt as a kid HIV/AIDS was not in my social network or community. I felt like it couldn't happen to me... it wouldn't happen to me. I took the photo to show HIV looks like both you and me! But, I joined because I CARE. I joined because my community NEEDS ME. I joined because HIV is REAL!"

Looking for more ways to help Face AIDS for World AIDS Day?

Join our conference call on November 17, 2009 with representatives from Federal HIV/AIDS programs. To participate, register here by November 15.
Tweet: Use the hashtag #WAD09 for all your World AIDS Day tweets. Connect with AIDS.gov on Twitter !
Write a Blog Post: Join bloggers from around the world and write a blog post on December 1 about why you choose to Face AIDS . Not a blogger? Comment on someone else’s blog post or ask your favorite blogger to join the event.

Check out our World AIDS Day page for even more ideas on how to Face AIDS. Planning to get involved? Have an idea or an event of your own? We'd love to hear from you!

U.S. to Remove HIV "Entry Ban"

2009-11-03T18:36:40-05:00

By Christopher Bates

It has been an important few weeks for those of us in the HIV community—we just wrapped up the U.S. Conference on AIDS, President Obama signed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009, and, as you may have heard, on Monday the U.S. took the next step in removing HIV from the list of diseases that prevent entry into this country. The repeal on the HIV “entry ban” will be effective in January of 2010. To learn more, read Secretary Sebelius’ press statement.

Highlights from the 2009 U.S. Conference on AIDS

2009-11-03T16:18:27-05:00

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

Many of you at USCA told us that you’re assessing how you can use new media in response to HIV. For example, Jeffrey Campbell from St. Hope Foundation in Houston told us how he is using text messaging to promote their educational and social events, primarily to African American men who have sex with men (MSM). And Kendel Powers from RAIN Oklahoma told us how they have used MySpace, Twitter, and Facbook to recruit volunteers and bring in new clients for care and treatment. It’s an exciting time for our HIV community and it’s an exciting time for new media. Because of new media, we were able to watch the President sign the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009 at the conference.

USCA New Media Panelists

NMAC also embraced new media tools more than ever for this year’s USCA. Not only did they blog , they also used Twitter , posted photos , and will post videos next week . And they supported several new media sessions and our day-long AIDS.gov new media institute which had beginner and experienced user tracks. In the afternoon both tracks came together to hear from a panel of new media experts including: Ian Anderson from POZ , Allegra Madsen from ISIS Inc , Murray Penner from NASTAD , Bonnie Goldman from TheBody.com , and Erik Ireland, a podcaster for the SF AIDS Foundation . During our panel we also had a demo of AIDSspace, a new social network site focused on AIDS, from Edward Mishaud and Annmarie Hou from UNAIDS . We’ve posted our slides from the institutes and a presentation we gave on slideshare .

Throughout the conference we also heard that some folks are still getting familiar with new media tools and are trying to understand how best to use them to meet their audiences’ needs. After the opening plenary, JoAnne Keatley , Director of the UCSF Center of Excellence for Transgender HIV Prevention told us, “In the transgender community, we’re using texting and other new media tools in our personal lives and it’s time now for us to adapt these tools in our work and response to HIV and AIDS.” Christopher Bates, HHS’ Director of the Office of HIV/AIDS Policy, also reinforced this statement in his closing remarks at the conference saying how important it is to use new media to expand the reach of our HIV programs. We look forward to seeing how the HIV community continues to adapt and adopt new media this year.

Thank you to:

AIDS.gov Facing AIDS Photo Booth (Photos two and three via the USCA blog , by Brandon Joseph Baker )

The hundreds of you who stopped by our AIDS.gov Facing AIDS photo booth to share your personal messages about why you are helping to Face AIDS for World AIDS Day. We’ll soon post photos from the booth. Speaking of World AIDS Day, we hope you’ll join us on November 17th for Federal World AIDS Day Conference Call. Register now to hear from and ask questions of leadership across HHS.
All of you who participated in our focus groups and usability testing about our new website.
NMAC, in particular Circe LeCompte and Paul Kawata for putting on such a powerful conference and for helping to support our AIDS.gov activities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWsBTwNIXL4
All of you working so hard to address HIV and AIDS in your communities—USCA brought together many voices from across the country who are working so hard to address this epidemic.

President Obama Signs the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009

2009-10-30T22:14:00-04:00

By Christopher Bates, Director HHS’ Office of HIV/AIDS Policy

President Barack Obama and lawmakers applaud Jeanne White-Ginder, right, mother of Ryan White, during his remarks before signing the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009 in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House. October 30, 2009.

Today President Obama signed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009. In his remarks at the signing, the President said, “over the past 19 years this legislation has evolved from an emergency response into a comprehensive national program for the care and support of Americans living with HIV/AIDS. It helps communities that are most severely affected by this epidemic and often least served by our health care system, including minority communities, the LGBT community, rural communities, and the homeless. It’s often the only option for the uninsured and the underinsured. And it provides life-saving medical services to more than half a million Americans every year, in every corner of the country.”

Jeffrey Crowley, Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy and Senior Advisor on Disability Policy at the White House, wrote a blog post to commemorate this important event and honor Ryan White’s Legacy.

This means that now we can focus our attention on other matters, preparing for the drafting of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy and beginning in earnest our efforts towards lifting the Federal ban on needle exchange.

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

2009-10-27T15:14:00-04:00

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.

You can also take all this information to create a newsletter. You can embed the text in the body of an e-newsletter or you can email it as an attachment and provide it as a downloadable PDF. Field offices can, in turn, print out the PDF and it make available for clients to pick up and read at each location -- or even include it in mailings to those without an Internet connection, giving them access to some of the same content available online.

This brings up an important point — new media works best when it is integrated with traditional media as part of a comprehensive communication strategy. In many ways, talking about a “new media strategy” is misleading — new media offers new tools, but the underlying communication and outreach needs remain the same. New media, used effectively, provides ways to reach broader audiences, usually at a lower cost, using fewer resources. (For general information about various new media tools, please refer to our New Media Toolkit one-pagers.) It's also important to get to know the different tools that you use and see how you can make small changes to tailor the content to that tool (even though the core content and message might be the same). This can have a big impact on how messages are shared. You can also track who consumes your content in different ways in order to tailor messages more for those audiences.

A number of organizations in the HIV community are repurposing, and not only using new media as part of their communications and outreach, but also to communicate in new, multidirectional ways. The Howard Brown Clinic in Chicago uses video to enhance their website , and posts the videos and other content to their YouTube channel and Facebook page . They have also used Facebook to communicate with and get feedback from their community. Whitman Walker Clinic in DC has taken a similar approach — using Facebook , Flickr , YouTube and Twitter to repurpose content. The National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) is using a number of different platforms to share information about next week's U.S. Conference on AIDS (USCA) , ranging from more traditional e-newsletters to a Facebook event (be sure check out last week's post on what we'll be doing at USCA!).

How do you get the most out of your content? Have you found that a particular audience prefers information delivered one way versus another? Have you come across opportunities to engage your audiences by making the same content available in multiple ways? We'd love to know!