Education and Communication: Enhancing Public Understanding and Fostering Disease Prevention

Abstract

l’d like to take a few moments to describe to you how we will proceed in this session. We will have two presentations, one by Mr. Fain and one by Mr, Bazell, and then we will have an opportunity for each of the four panelists to provide you with a thumbnail sketch of their perspectives as they interact with each other and specifically with the two speakers. The emphasis during this session will be the extent to which the media, electronic and print, has enhanced public understanding and fostered disease prevention. As moderator, I must confess that I found it difficult to be moderate, on this point, I’ve found it difficult to be moderate because, as Executive Director of the National Gay Task Force, during the first three or four years of the AIDS epidemic I have experienced first hand a litany of things that have given me reason to question the media. Indeed there were incidents in the initial months and some would say years of the AIDS epidemic, in which our very grip on reality was questioned.