Introduction

Since the first days of the epidemic, AIDS has been as much a communications and political struggle as a medical and scientific one.

Indeed, America's war on AIDS began only after we found a message that resonated with the American people, one that appealed to our nation's best sense of compassion. As a result, reason and rationality triumphed over fear and ignorance.

Today, the AIDS epidemic has shifted for better and for worse. While new life-prolonging drugs have ended the automatic death sentence of an HIV diagnosis, the decline in death contributed to a sense that the epidemic is somehow over. In addition, there is a growing misperception that people with AIDS somehow receive "special" treatment.

To combat these new crises of complacency and misunderstanding, AIDS Action launched a groundbreaking and unique public opinion project, focusing on finding messages that re-engage the American people, national leaders and AIDS-affected communities in the fight against a changing but continually dangerous epidemic.

More than simply a polling project, we sat down with ordinary Americans from Milwaukee to Atlanta to gain a sense of their concerns, their fears and their hopes about the fight against AIDS.

While many issues generate varying degrees of concern, AIDS Action's data-driven research has found that none is more compelling than the need to stop the 20,000 new HIV infections among young Americans each year.

Even more important, our research found that the youth prevention message increases concerns about other fronts in the fight against AIDS such as treatment, research and fairness issues.

Protecting a new generation from AIDS -- a moral and societal imperative to save a new generation of young people at risk for HIV as well as a message that reinvigorates the American people in the fight against AIDS.

This handbook will help you talk about AIDS in ways that the American people and decision-makers understand and with messages that engage them and can achieve policy results. Please use this guide whenever you talk to the media, government decision-makers or your community allies.

Communications -- one of our most valuable tools in the fight to end AIDS.

Sincerely,
Daniel Zingale
Executive Director