Menlo Park, Calif. and Geneva, Switzerland — The International AIDS Society (IAS), custodian of the International AIDS Conference, and the Kaiser Family Foundation will provide free, worldwide online access to the XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012) taking place in Washington, D.C., USA.
AIDS 2012 will feature presentations of important new scientific research and opportunities for dialogue on the major challenges facing the global response to AIDS. Kaiser — an independent operating foundation and non-partisan source of facts, information, analysis and journalism, based in Menlo Park, Calif., USA — is the official webcaster for AIDS 2012, providing coverage of daily developments from July 22 to 27 on its website, http://www.kff.org/aids2012/.
In addition to more than 50 online webcasts of conference sessions and press conferences, podcasts will be available for downloading in both English and Spanish. Some sessions, including the Opening and Closing Sessions, will be presented via live webcast, while other coverage will be tape-delayed by a few hours and available on-demand. The webcasts will include sessions featuring President Bill Clinton, South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Ambassador Eric Goosby, Bill Gates and Sir Elton John, among others. The full list of webcast sessions (subject to change) is available at http://aids2012.org/.
Kaiser’s Daily Global Health Policy Report, a free, daily news summary service, will be enhanced during the week of the conference to include summaries of what the global media are reporting from the conference and a guide to the latest video session coverage.
Kaiser is also providing the video for conference hubs, which will feature viewings of select AIDS 2012 conference sessions followed by discussions and workshops on how the sessions’ content can be applied locally. The two official conference hubs will be held in Kiev, Ukraine, and Kolkata (Calcutta), India, while more than 40 independent hubs across the world are already planned.
A widget for sharing Kaiser’s content is available for organizations and individuals who want to further spread the information by carrying the coverage on their own websites, blogs or social networking pages. Kaiser’s video content from the conference will also be available to embed on other sites.
“The webcasts are a key part of the IAS’s commitment to ensure that the proceedings at AIDS 2012 have the greatest possible impact in the global response to HIV,” said Elly Katabira, IAS President and International Chair of AIDS 2012. “We are grateful to Kaiser for their partnership with us to take key portions of the conference program directly to locations and communities most deeply impacted by the epidemic.”
“Offering free access to many of the conference sessions allows us to connect people around the world to important HIV/AIDS developments that emerge from this conference,” said Drew Altman, Kaiser President and CEO. “This free, online conference experience ensures key findings and information reach a worldwide audience, including those who might otherwise have no access to the discussions taking place in Washington.”
More information about the conference, including the latest program details, is available at http://aids2012.org/.
Kaiser’s AIDS 2012 conference coverage will be available online through the Foundation’s Global Health Gateway, http://globalhealth.kff.org, which also features Kaiser’s original policy analysis and polling on the U.S. role in global health; country-specific disease and demographic data through the Global Health Facts database; regularly updated resources tracking major policy and budget developments; news summaries from the Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report; and a reporter’s guide to covering the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.
About the Kaiser Family Foundation
The Kaiser Family Foundation, a leader in health policy analysis, health journalism and communication, is dedicated to filling the need for trusted, independent information on the major health issues of the day. The Foundation is a non-profit private operating foundation, based in Menlo Park, CA with an office and conference center in Washington, D.C.
About the IAS
The International AIDS Society (IAS) is the world’s leading independent association of HIV professionals, with over 16,000 members from more than 196 countries working at all levels of the global response to AIDS. Our members include researchers from all disciplines, clinicians, public health and community practitioners on the frontlines of the epidemic, as well as policy and programme planners. The IAS is the custodian of the biennial International AIDS Conference, which will be held in Washington, D.C., in July 2012, and lead organizer of the IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention.