dr. koh. [applause] speech of thank you so much for that kind introduction and for your tremendous leadership on this issue. is such a great honor to work with you. let me a knowledge melody barnes who has been such a wonderful colleague and we are so proud to have her in the administration, doing so many efforts with respect to public health in this country and of course the great or wish to work with secretary sebelius of the department of health and human services. thank you for this great honor to be with you today for the unveiling of this important strategy. i also did want to recognize again dr. ron valdiserri. if you would stand up and wave and get some applause. [applause] >> we are very pleased to be

with you today because the strategy has been informed by your efforts as you have heard her go the voices of many americans have shaped the strategy, voices of people across the country who are advocating for it and living with hiv. and this strategy pays tribute to the many we have tragically lost to this epidemic, but it also represents a commitment for an entire nation for a healthier future. the message is clear, we need the entire country involve. and this epidemic affects everyone. you don't have to be infected to be affected by this virus. i am especially honored to be part of this unveiling because i have had the privilege of viewing this epidemic from multiple perspectives. first i am a physician and in mica rear of caring for patients for over 30 years, cared for many patients with hiv/aids.

in fact i was chief resident of boston city hospital 30 years ago when the first cases were being described so to watch this progression has been extraordinary for me on a personal level. secondly i'm a former state health commissioner so i got to oversee hiv/aids efforts in massachusetts and it is great to see many of my colleagues here today. now is the assistant secretary for health it is a great privilege to work with you to move forward and build better systems of care and prevention and insure all americans truly achieve their highest attainable standard of health. as you have heard from my colleagues, this plan stresses several themes to put our resources where the epidemic is hitting the hardest, to put out strategies where they will get the best results and to put evidence-based science first so those are our themes moving forward. over the next 150 days we have a lot of work to do and it is my

great privilege to work with all of you in the department under the direction of the secretary, to map out a plan that has specific steps for federal cabinet agencies and subagencies and we look forward to working with you and mr. crowley and his office to make this strategy, live over the next 150 days. our office of the assistant secretary has a new mission statement, mobilizing leadership in science and prevention for a healthier nation so this integration is something that we embrace and we look forward to working with you. the secretary is articulated a number of steps, how we can make this strategy concrete immediately and let me just review a couple of them for you. first our office of assistant secretary will be coordinating activities throughout the department and across federal government. we will be connecting with many

of you and the community and many of you have been tremendous leaders on these issues for many years. we will start a process of better tracking how each state and territory is implementing this plan at the local level. we will be initiating consultations with the bisexual and transgender, the lbj lb gt committee to advance health promotion of disease prevention in this critical area. we will be connecting with offices of faith-based and community initiatives to make the strategy, live, and we are again very grateful to members of the presidential advisory council on hiv/aids, many councilmembers are here today. you are national experts in this area and we are very honored to work closely with you to make the strategy come alive for the american people. the job of implementing the strategy is not one that is

belonging to the federal government alone. our success requires an entire nation to join together so that every person reaches his or her full potential for health and our vision and our goal is to have a day soon where hiv infections are rare and everybody receives care. thank you very much for being here, for your presence in your commitment and let me turn this back to melody barnes. thank you are a much. [applause] >> wonderful. secretary sebelius and i were saying this podium is awfully high. [laughter] thank you and i hope that you all have a better sense of what we sought to accomplish in the way we went about doing it, and now i would like to open the floor for a few questions. if you could let us know your name and where you are from we would appreciate it. why don't we start here.

>> i would like to-- my name is robin webb from jackson. i would like to see the day the 2000 people living with hiv in mississippi are the same as other areas of the country because disparities and inequities of the services and it looks like so many folks have lost hope that there will ever come that day. has there have been any discussion about geographic disparities or geographic inequities in terms of services and in terms of how they are going to be delivered and how the strategy will work? >> absolutely. >> thank you robin. we recognize when we talk about concentrating on the community that gratis or is there a different elements and certainly geographic differences is something we consider so the strategy does talk about how effective they are-- the epidemic is concentrated in the northeast and the south, puerto rico and the virgin islands but

even if you go a level lower if you are in any state, we know the epidemic is not spread so if you one-- pick one state maryland, you could say most of the cases are in baltimore and montgomery, prince george's county but even in the city so in the district of columbia it is concentrated so there is much more hiv is to the river here than other parts. so the geographic issues are something we think the strategy needs to address. >> can i just say also, piece of this puzzle is that i think, tell the passage of the affordable care act, the dealing with health disparities and the gap in access to good care were dramatic, and some of that have different levels of eligibility for medicaid. that will change. states have different outreach efforts with the doubling of the

community health center footprint that occurred because the recovery act, that will change. with the pipeline for additional medical providers, particularly medical providers coming out of minority communities. i think we have some strategies now in place and some funding now in place that goes directly to some of the disparities, some of which are geographic and some of which are economic that have been plaguing this effort for such a long time. >> state your name and where you are from. >> i am charles king, housing works for new york city and not to be too cynical, i just wonder how we think going from one new infection every nine minutes to one new infection every 12 minutes is making infections in the united states exceedingly rare and my second question more specifically is given the voluminous evidence provided to the white house about the efficacy of housing as a

structural intervention and prevention why there is no mention of how for example directing hud to target housing for those most at risk instead of many of the current hud policies that are in opposite effect. >> the first question is really about the goals and we said within five years we would reduce hiv infections by 25%. we think that is an achievable but also very aggressive goal. some of the challenges we face are that for a number of years we have increasing numbers of people living with hiv and we have been able to maintain a steady state of the number of new infections from year-to-year. quite frankly we are a little worried that if things stay the same we are going to start to see increasing numbers of new infection so just to hold steady is going to be work for us. in the past there've been efforts to quite frankly set aggressive goals, cutting incidents in half.

i think we went through serious process and are trying to be honest about what is achievable so i think by setting a goal of 25% is aggressive but realistic. i wish i could tell you we could set a gal of 50% or 75%. i just don't know how we could do that in the short-term but again we are setting goals for the next five years. now your question about housing, you know we travel the country. we have heard a lot about housing. when we talk about increasing access to care, optimizing health outcomes, we specifically say that we need to recognize some people are challenged in meeting basic needs such as housing so we think there is an important role for expanding access to housing. our point on community level interventions in addressing health disparities is that we think we spent too much time focusing on individual level interventions and we need better approaches we can apply to the community level. we don't think-- we have a start. i'm not saying-- housing certainly has a role to play but the emphasis we place on the

community level interventions as we need to develop more and better ones to move us forward and certainly housing has a role in that. >> why don't we take this question right here. i am sorry. >> i have the mic so i have the floor. [laughter] nancy mann, mac cosmetics and congratulations and thank you all. a question in terms of private donors. i've seen in the history of epidemics we have not had enough private dollars in the united states so i just wanted to invite you to talk a little about how you see private donors making a difference in actualizing the plan and how we could work together to make all these happen? >> nancy as you know, the white house has done a series of specific topics on issues like women and hiv, youth and hiv but six weeks or so we held a meeting at the white house on public partnerships. one of the things we can't say enough is we can do this alone.

this is a national strategy. we need all parts of american society to reengage and the business community does and the foundation community does need to support us. at this meeting we have really talked about three areas where we think they have expertise and the capacity to help us. one is helping us address some of the short-term challenges abroad access to care and we know many pharmaceutical companies and others are stepping up to the plate to help provide support of the local level. we think that is very important. when the obama administration came into office we worked with cities to launch the-- business plan before he got here so we are not saying we did it alone but when we launch if it was the first social campaign launched by the federal government in 15 years. so to some extent we think we need to as a country remember how to do the things we used to know how to do and certainly engaging media. we think that is where there is a lot of credit sector partners

that can help us and do a better job than we could do alone. the third areas the issue i was just mentioning about community level interventions. we don't have all the answers and we need a broad range of private sector stakeholders to help us figure out what those interventions are. thank you. >> thank you. i which would just add to that participating in that form with you on that particular topic. one, the president has consistently consistently said and you see it here and you see it across the range of different issues we work on, that we have to work in partnership with every sector, that the federal government brings a lot to the table but we recognize the state and local government, the private sector, ngo's, the philanthropic sector all bring expertise and resources and knowledge and experience in one of the things we talked about on that panel was the fact that the private sector has experience with the communities in which it works, in which it lives and by building on that expertise, by building on that knowledge we

have a better base of information not to mention the resources and just the expertise of what you do, not to mention the people who you employ, the people that you work with so we believe it really is an all hands on deck moment and we all learn from each other and leverage each other so i just wanted to have that and take a question here unless someone else has the microphone and i missed it. >> first, i want to express my personal appreciation. my name is dr. gets from south carolina and at my state pages recently cut all funding. they cut the only hiv extension faith-based program in 30 years for aids in our state, so my question is, given the rejection of many states around the ideology and evidence-based research, plants and outcomes

promoted in this national plan, what strategies are proposed to monitor local compliance or alignment with the president's national plan and will be outcomes derived from the proposed federal assessment impact federal funding to states who fail to acknowledge or incorporate the strategies into their programs? [applause] >> in response i would say a couple of things. yes we believe that there will always be too limited resources and we can't afford to waste them so how we tackle so many issues is to say we need to rely on the best evidence of what works and make sure we fund them. already when we allocate funds whether it is prevention funds to the cdc or care funds for ryan white given to local committees, so already we make significant efforts to make sure we are funding the right dings and giving to the right groups but we think we need an enhanced effort on that. there are a couple of things.

as the departments develop their own plans we will be looking for steps they can take to ensure that we are again only funding the evidence-based approaches that work. the other is that the presidential memorandum also imposes requirements for the departments to make sure that they consult with omb so that when they are putting forth budget request for their annual budget, that the goals and directions of the strategy are reflected in their request, so i think those things together will help address it. ..

before i do i also just what thank everyone on the stage secretary sebelius, assistant secretary, director crawly as well as his office. i also want to recognize someone who has been a real leader on this issue and just a dog in her pursuit of solutions on this issue who is here with us today. [applause] and again, i want to thank all of you for your input and your work with us this far and also all the things that we anticipating a plan to do together. thank you so much for being here. thank you. [applause]

>> the president of the eight health care center, to on the policy. he spoke at the national press club for 20 minutes. >> if you go to the dictionary, it defines a plan of strategy as a plan of action. webster's dictionary says the art of war in directing large military movements. this plan that has been in

development for 15 months, first of all, is nothing we did not already know. most importantly, you cannot fight a war without resources. as we know from the trillions of dollars we are spending on fighting foreign wars as we speak. in response to the worst crisis in the aids drug assistance program in many years and requested by a coalition of community organizations and states for $126 million in assistance, the administration offered $25 million which would not even be a brown the error -- eight rounding error in tarp. we learned state that the

administration plans to do it -- to have to dedicate $35 million in new money to new hiv prevention methods. that amounts to approximately 9 cents for every man, woman, and child. we heard a few interesting things today. we heard from secretary sibelius that this strategy rests on unfettered access to care. the affordable care act does not take effect until 2014, but today we have 3000 people on waiting lists for aids drugs across the country. a person died on that waiting list and south carolina -- in south carolina.

access to care for hiv is declining. in this country . you cannot say this is a new strategy if you do not intend to spend any money on it. the secretary also referred to the slow response to aids in the '80s -- in the 1980's. we know that president reagan did not mention the word aids for the first six years of his administration. you can hardly say that 18 months into this administration, coming up with a plan which will collect dust on the shelves of the library of congress as have hundreds of other plants that have been developed over the years, is lightning speed. the reality is that the number

of people who are currently becoming infected with hiv is rising. the people who are positive and don't know what has been static. we are seeing that people are not getting the care they need. not only does rationing care to hiv patients her to those people but it sends a terrible message to the people we want to get tested. why should someone get tested if they won't have access to care? so, to go a little further -- right now there is a bill before the senate, sb3401 and that bill

appropriates $126 million for the aids drug assistance programs from stimulus money. no democrat has signed on to that bill and of the white house is opposed to it. the reason that we were given that they are opposed to it is that is not a proper use of stimulus funds and also we have the partisan attitude that since the republicans all voted against stimulus that they don't have any right as to how it should be spent. the reality is that we desperately need this money. the aids healthcare foundation felt it was very important to get the drug companies who are the primary beneficiaries along with patience from the program to contribute and we led a campaign, a vigorous campaign to

get them to contribute. their contribution in terms of increased rebates will exceed $135 million. that puts into stark relief as stingy this $25 million amount of money is. i want to say that if we look out over the horizon of aids over the last nine years and where we have had success, the one factor that has been universal whether it is from rich countries or poor countries has been political will. the reason -- the number one reason why i believe we have not succeeded in fighting aids successfully in this country is that we have never had the

political will. today's national strategy does not represent that. more disturbingly, you have to go all the way back to the reagan administration to find an administration more indifferent to the issue. than this administration. i would next like to introduce brian exztaata. >> good afternoon my name is brandon exata. we go by the acronym aaa +. we are solely dedicated to promoting and enhancing the aids drug assistance program which is a federal and state program to

improve access to care for people living with hiv aids. we work with patients, advocates, community, health care, government, pharmaceutical, and other stakeholders to make sure access to care is granted to those living with hiv. i am pleased to join the a's health care foundation today, the largest global aids organization providing cutting edge of medicine and advocacy to over 100,000 people in 22 countries. thank you for letting me come in on your parade and support you and what you are doing. i stand before you today as someone who has been living with hiv for eight years. i am someone who has been on the aids drug assistance program at one time in my life. unfortunately, i address you this afternoon conflicted by a feeling of accomplishment with a sense of defeat. the very moment we should be celebrating the person ever national aids strategy and united states, we find nearly

2300 americans living with hiv aids that we are aware of waiting to access their life- saving medication. in the wealthiest nation in the world, it begs the question where is the justice? who is looking out for the people living with hiv aids waiting to excess care? when will the relief that comforted the banks, financial institutions, although makers, and people who purchased homes they could not afford find its way to the most underserved people in our country? quite frankly, what happened to the audacity of hope promised by this president? i can tell you that speaking to some of the people who are on these waiting lists that there is no such hope. there is nothing but fear, frustration, and quite frankly, there is anger. the crisis is real and is most definitely dangerous. over six out of 10 patients are

people of color, african- americans, hispanic. 3/4 of patients live below to enter% of the federal poverty level. over 86% of the patients currently on a waiting list reside in the south. there has been a 2011% increase since may of 2009 when the waiting list stood at 99. the national aids strategy, this very document that was handed out by the white house today, was supposed to be a milestone achieved by a president willing to extend the political capital, willing to put the purpose of the port ahead of the wants of the wealthy, willing to inspire a nation longing for leadership rather than protecting special interests and quite frankly willing to address the domestic a crisis long ignored by his predecessor in the oval office. today, we cannot celebrate such a milestone. i have to tell you that your

poster is quite creative and i think it depicts an accurate picture. we expected more, mr. president, but we cannot, because there are thousands of our fellow citizens trying and in some cases of dying to access the treatment that we know will make them healthier, more productive members of their communities. the national aids strategy can only be as successful as lovell of commitment extended by its leaders in washington, d.c. it is the necessary -- if the necessary funding does not accompany the lofty goals, and the strategy is doomed for failure. one final thought -- as a nation, how can we send a message to our people, to our citizens to go get tested so that you can know your status ? and that you can manage of this disease as a chronic colmes by accessing early treatment when at the same time there is likely the existing death a waiting

list lurks around the corner. with that, i conclude that it is time to end this way spirit we can do better, mr. president. thank you very much. >> i would like to introduce tom meyers, our chief of public affairs. >> good afternoon, everyone. as you have heard, the announced strategy may have some good things come out of it. it clearly puts the first two runs a strategy to prevent new infection and access to care. that puts testing and treatment front and center. that is where it should be. this epidemic is driven by people who have hiv and don't know it. it is estimated to be 20% of

all americans with hiv and 70% of all new infections. that is a good thing. however, in dealing with the strategy and creating this strategy to be implemented sometime in the future, the administration ignores the crisis today. you cannot have a strategy where your first two prongs are to prevent new infections and provide access to care when there is a waiting list. the failure to address the issue today will severely hamper the ability of the administration to address the crisis going forward. we need the ability to go forward. that's all i have. thank you very much. >> we will take questions.

>> they stated at the white house that the announcement cited a shortage of resources and so forth. they acknowledged that they don't have the resources at the moment. part of the plan is to better use existing resources. do you think there is a merit to that? >> the proposal was that they were going to take money away from the low-prevalent state to give it to the high-prevalent states. i think that is a prescription for disaster. when we were trying to end smallpox, we went to the remotest the village to find the last case. if we try to contain a forest fire, yes, you put out hot spots, but you have a ring of

containment around the entire thing. could there be more efficiencies? yes. the congress passed a $1 trillion health care bills. they said it is revenue neutral because it will save money in the out years. right now, we are running up a lifetime tet of $36 billion for newly infected infected patients. this is definitely pay now, pay later scenario and the reality is that it seems like every initiative that benefits big business gets a blank check. everything that meets the needs of the underserved there isn't enough money for.

we mentioned earlier that the unspent stimulus -- i would like an explanation about why buying medications for people does not qualify as stimulus. bridges and roads to know where does, apparently. people are employed making medications and employed working thathe agencies distribute them come etc. [unintelligible] >> this is money that has been appropriated. we agree. >> don't to pomp and circumstance if you don't plan on spending a nickel. don't do the best dog and pony

show and invite people to the white house if you are broke and you cannot do anything. that at insult to injury that they are trying to get a photo opportunity about age when people are dying on waiting lists around the country. there has been a lot of attention paid to waiting lists but it is easy to understand. that is really not the worst part of it. if you get on a waiting list and you don't die, you will get medication at some point. if you drop the eligibility from 300% of the poverty level which is $33,000 for a medication that could cost $20,000, you drop it down to to enter% and you kick 10,000 people off the program who will never be eligible, that

is a really bad thing. if the state takes their formula for the drugs they cover and cut in half, that is horrible. the reality is that medicare/medicaid are entitlement programs. we have a weird situation in this country where the only way you become eligible for public assistance if you are hiv- positive is if you develop full- blown aids which is more costly and then become this. disabled. this was intended to be part of the health care reform bill and it did not make it. it is part of a laundry list of legislative initiatives that people who are supposed to be sympathetic to this community

have ignored. we are bang hard on the president, but what is more shocking is that nancy pelosi, speaker of the house who represents one of the most infected districts in the nation has yet to say a word one or do anything to alleviate this crisis. >> the president on a advisory council -- >>, appeared -- come up here them up the president's on advisory council recommended for $126 million. the president's on advisory council recommended for the early treatment for hiv act. to know that this money is already appropriated -- if you read this stimulus bill, there is one which in there that clearly states that stimulus dollars can be used to address a

public health emergency. i don't know the exact wording. they are simply playing politics with this in hiding behind the fact that they don't have money. the money is there and it has been appropriated. secretaries of bilious said they acted quickly. we have been pounding the pavement to get this money before the beginning of the year. it takes six-seven months, i don't know that qualifies as a quick turnaround time. >> one of the first things this administration did was to remote $400 million from the stimulus package for hiv testing. this would have made a major difference. it certainly qualifies as stimulus given the fact that could have circulated very quickly other questions? >> ""the new york times" did a

fairly major story last week reporting on problems you have raised. it said that although the waiting list was large, maybe 1900, almost everybody on the waiting list was getting their drugs through various programs from the pharmaceutical companies. is that true and how many are getting them? >> i don't know the exact number and i don't think anyone can know that. first of all, it is a very cumbersome process to get people on. if somebody loses their eligibility for some reason and they are on medication, there will be an interruption in their medication. beyond that, as i have said, to my mind, the eligibility reduction and the reduction in the formulas are the more serious issues.

suggesting that you can run the aids assistance program through drug company donations is pitiful. it is a stopgap measure, it is not a solution. i would be more sympathetic to the view of the white house if we had not extracted these huge concessions from the drug companies. we will continue to push the drug companies to restrain their pricing for these drug. s. anyone else? thank you very much. we will be available for questions after the press conference, thank you. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010]

>> the president spoke about the new national hiv aids strategy. this is 15 minutes. >> ladies and gentleman, the president of the united states. >> good evening, everybody. this is a feisty group here. i love you back. thank you. it is a privilege to speak with all of you. welcome to the white house. let me begin by welcoming the

cabinet secretaries who are here. i know i saw at least one of them, kathleen sibelius, our outstanding secretary of health and human services. [applause] i want to thank the members of congress who are present and all the distinguished guests that are here and that includes all of you. [laughter] in particular, i want to recognize eric goolsbee our global coordinator. his leadership of the president's emergency plan for aids relief is doing so much to save some lives around the world. he will be leading our delegation to the international aids conference in vienna next week. i am grateful for his outstanding service. [applause] i want to also thank the presidential advisory cabinet on hiv aids. [applause]

and the federal hiv interagency working group for all the work they are doing. thank you very much. [applause] it has been nearly 30 years since a cdc publication called "morbidity and mortality weekly report." it documented five cases of an illness that would come to be known as hiv aids. in the beginning, it was known as the "gay disease." a disease surrounded by fear and misunderstanding and a disease we were too slow to confront and too slow to turn back. in the decades since, epidemics have emergent countries in africa and around the globe and we have grown better equipped as individuals and nations to fight this disease.

from activists, researchers, community leaders who have waged a battle against aids for so long including many of you here in this room, we have learned what we can do to stop the spread of the disease. we have learned what we can do to extend the lives of people living with it. we have been reminded of our obligations to one another. these are obligations that like the virus itself transcend barriers of race or station or sexual orientation or faith or nationality. the question is not whether we know what to do, but whether we will do it. [applause] whether we will fulfill those obligations and marshall our resources and political will to confront a tragedy that is preventable. all of us are here because we are committed to that cause.

we are here because we believe that while hiv transmission rates in this country are not as high as they once were, every new case is one case to minute. we are here because we believe in an america where those living with hiv aids are not viewed with suspicion, but treated with respect this is where they are provided with the medication they need and where they can look out their lives as fully as their health allows. we are here because of the extraordinary men and women whose stories compel us to stop this. i will call at a few people. people like benjamin banks who right now is completing a master's degree in public health, planning a family with his wife, and deciding whether to run another half marathon. he has been hiv-positive for 29 years, a virus he contracted during cancer surgery as a child.

inspiring others to fight the disease has become his mission. we are here because of people like craig washington who after seeing what was happening in his community with friends passing away and life stories sanitized at funerals, homophobia and discrimination that's around of the disease, he got tested, disclosed his status with the support of his parents, his partner and his family, and took up the movement for prevention and awareness in which he is a leader today. we are here because of people like linda scruggs. [applause] lend up learned she was hiv- positive about two decades ago when she went in for prenatal care. she decided to turn her life around. she left alive of substance abuse behind. she became an advocate for women and empower them to break free from what she calls the bondage of secrecy. she inspired her son who was born healthy to become an aids

activist himself. we are here because of linda, craig, and then and the over 1 million americans living with hiv aids and the nearly 600,000 americans who have lost their lives to the disease. it is on their behalf and behalf of all americans that we begin a national dialogue about combating aids at the beginning of this administration. in recent months, we have helped 14 community discussions and spoken with over 4200 people and received over 1000 recommendations on the white house website. we're devising and approached not from the top down but from the bottom up. today, we are releasing our national hiv aids strategy. [applause] this is the product of these

conversations and conversations with hiv-positive americans and health-care providers with business leaders, with faith leaders, and the best policy and scientific minds in our country. i know that this strategy comes at a difficult time for americans living with hiv aids because we have cash-strapped states who are being forced to cut back on a cecil's -- on essentials including assistance for aids drugs. i know the need is great. that is why we have increased federal assistance each year i have been in office, providing an emergency supplement this year to help people get the drugs they need even as we pursue a national strategy that focuses on three central goals the first goal is prevention. we cannot afford to rely on any single prevention that alone so our strategy includes a comprehensive approach to reducing the number of new hiv infections from expanded testing

so people can learn their status, to education so people can curb risky behaviors, to drugs that can prevent a mother from transmitting the virus to her child. to support our new direction, we invested $30 million in new money that i have committed to make sure these investments continue in the future. >> mr. president -- >> we can talk after i speak. that is why i invited you here so you don't have to yell. [applause] thank you. second, is treatment. to extend lives and extent -- and prevent transmission. we make -- we need to make sure every american gets the medical care they need [applause] ] by stopping health insurers from denying coverage because of a pre-existing condition and by

creating a marketplace where people with hiv aids can buy affordable care. the health insurance reforms i send into law this year are an important step forward and we will build on those reforms so we can understand when people have trouble putting food on the table or finding a place to live, is almost impossible to keep them on life-saving therapies. [applause] the third goal is reducing health disparity by combating the disease in communities where the need is greatest. [applause] we all know the statistics. gay and bisexual men make up a small percentage of the population but over 50% of new infections. for african-americans, it is 30% of the population and nearly 15% of the people living with aids. hiv infection rates among black

women are almost 20 times with the are for white women. such health disparities call on us to make a greater effort as a nation to offer testing and treatment to the people who needed the most. [applause] reducing new hiv infections, improving care for people living with hiv aids, narrowing health disparities -- these are the central goals of our national strategy. they must be pursued hand-in- hand with our global public health strategy to roll back the pandemic beyond our borders. they must be pursued by a government that is acting as one. we need to make sure all our efforts are coordinated within the federal government and across federal, state, and local governments because that is how we will achieve results and let americans live longer and healthier lives. [applause] government has to do its part, but our ability to combat hiv

aids does not rest on government alone. it requires companies to contribute funding and expertise to the fight, it requires us to use every source of information from tv to film to the internet to promote awareness, it requires community leaders to embrace all and not just some who are affected by the disease. [applause] it requires each of us to act responsibly in our own lives and it requires all of us to look inward. that is not only how we can and discouraged but rule out the inequities and which this scourged price spreato rise. hrives. how can we expect a woman to disclose her diagnosis [applause] when we fail to offer a child a

proper education, when we provide to provide them with proper medical education and responsibility, how can we expect to take the precaution necessary to protect himself and others? [applause] when we continue as a community of nations to fight poverty and inequality in our midst, we don't stand up for how women are treated in certain countries, how can we expect to end the disease, a pandemic that feeds on such conditions. fighting hiv aids in america and around the world will require more than just fighting the virus, it will require a broader effort to make life more just and equitable for the people who inhabit this earth. that is a cause to which i will be firmly committed so long as i have the privilege of serving as president. to all of you who have been out there in the fields working on

this issue day in and day out, sometimes it is the bank was work, but the truth is, you are representing what is best in all of us. this is our regard for one another and their willingness to care for one another. i thank you for that. i am grateful for you. you have a partner in may. god bless you and god bless the united states of america. [applause] ♪ [general chatter]

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>> coming up, "washington journal" is next, live with your

phone calls. later on live coverage of the house, a bill to commute -- promote telecommuting among workers. and in about 45 minutes, we will discuss immigration with congressman luis gutierrez and talk to senator tom coburn about the economy and an attorney with a look at the compensation process for gulf coast residents who suffered losses due to the oil spill. this is "washington journal."