Today President Obama fulfilled a promise he made on the campaign trail to implement a National AIDS Strategy for the United States. This marks the first time in the almost 30 years of America's HIV/AIDS epidemic that our nation will undertake a coordinated response and hold decision-makers accountable for achieving results. We commend the Obama administration for their efforts and look forward to working with partners in all sectors of our society to end the epidemic in Black America and all of America. Read my Statement on the strategy in our news section.

In this issue we focus on the success story unfolding in the Bronx, as New York City's health department attempts to learn the HIV status of every resident of that borough. As writer Tomika Anderson shows, a strategic and collaborative response carried out in Black and Latino neighborhoods in cooperation with those communities yields results.

This week the Institute is leading a media delegation to the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria. The global struggle against AIDS and that occurring in Black America are inseparable and can inform one another. The Black AIDS Institute will foster this connection by facilitating a Black American presence at the conference, allowing us to communicate directly and disseminate information to millions of African Americans. So next week look for special daily editions of the Black AIDS Weekly AIDS 2010.

Also in this issue, Institute intern Quinton Law blogs from the NAACP Convention. And on Saturday I spoke with CNN anchor Don Lemon about a breakthrough in vaccine research recently reported upon in the Wall Street Journal.

Between the launch of the president's strategy and new findings from Vienna, we look forward to furthering the dialogue as we work to end the AIDS epidemic in Black America.

Yours in the struggle,

Phill