Events Planned to Commemorate the 20th Anniversary of AIDS in the Media
Many organizations are planning events to mark Tuesday's 20th anniversary of the first report on the disease that would come to be known as AIDS. Several of the events are outlined below:
- On June 3, the National Minority AIDS Council, along with support from Project Inform, AIDS Research Alliance, various chapters of ACT UP and other groups, will hold a march to the White House, Congress and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, titled, "Remember the Dead -- Renew the Struggle." "[T]he last thing we need is a month of self-congratulatory black-tie galas, fundraisers for the AIDS bureaucracy or sentimental ceremonies," NMAC's Cleve Jones stated in a press release. For more information on the march, go to http://www.aidsaction20.org (NMAC release, 4/27).
- A consortium of groups, including the Gay Men's Health Crisis, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Whitman-Walker Clinic, on June 3 will launch the nation's "first public AIDS awareness campaign in more than a decade" intended to "encourage Americans to recommit themselves to the fight against AIDS." The campaign's central message is "20 Years of AIDS is Enough. Prevent. Care. Remember." The campaign will use "virtually every medium available, featuring 3,000 outdoor ads in 33 states, a video public service announcement sent to 1,100 cable and broadcast television stations, a radio PSA sent to 1,000 radio stations and a print ad to be featured in 1,500 daily newspapers. The campaign will also feature an "interactive" Web site with information on HIV/AIDS and how to become involved in community anti-AIDS efforts. "This campaign is meant to reignite the sense of urgency around this disease that existed a decade ago. It was that urgency -- that sense of emergency -- that was the catalyst for the progress we've made. Complacency is the biggest enemy we've got right now, and it threatens to erode that progress," Cornelius Baker, executive director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, said (20 Years of AIDS release, 5/30). To view the ads on kaisernetwork.org's AdWatch, click here.
- The Kaiser Family Foundation and the Ford Foundation will sponsor a symposium on June 5, titled, "U.S. AIDS Policy -- Entering the Third Decade," featuring prominent policymakers, researchers and community leaders. KFF President Drew Altman will also present the results of the foundation's latest poll of Americans' attitudes toward AIDS. The symposium, scheduled to take place from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., will feature Director of the National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention Helene Gayle, Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), former Surgeons General C. Everett Koop and Joycelyn Elders and current Surgeon General David Satcher, among others. The symposium will be Webcast on Tuesday by kaisernetwork.org. To view the Webcast on Tuesday, click here (KFF/Ford Foundation release, 5/30).