At a recent White House event, the Obama administration took a major step in confronting HIV, a health threat that affects African-Americans more than any other racial or ethnic group.  At that event in early April, I had the honor of joining administration officials and some of the nation’s most influential African-American leaders to announce Act Against AIDS – a new five-year campaign to refocus the nation’s attention on the HIV crisis right here in the United States. 

The first phase of the Act Against AIDS communication campaign will highlight the fact that every nine minutes someone in the United States becomes infected with HIV.  That statistic is based on CDC estimates released last year, which found that approximately 56,000 Americans become newly infected with HIV annually – and that nearly half of them are Black.