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HIV Prevention Leadership Summit 2004 Highlights

By Elizabeth Mediano2004 HIV prevention leadership summit
Georgia World Congress Center
Atlanta, Georgia - June 16 - 19, 2004

For over ten years, the Community Planning Leadership Summit (CPLS) has successfully gathered HIV/AIDS community leaders from all over the country. This forum has been an outstanding networking tool as well as resource for many health departments, community co-chairs, and community planning leaders in local, state, and national levels. This year, the format of this conference has been modified to reflect its new overall theme; “Retooling to Maximize the Power of Prevention”. In light of the new CDC’s Advancing HIV Prevention (AHP) Initiative, one of the goals of this year’s summit is to help bring together leaders in HIV prevention as well as to increased linkages between prevention partners including health departments, community based organizations, capacity building providers, as well as the CDC’s HIV/AIDS Prevention Division and other Federal Agencies. Given this new change, what was once known as CPLS became the New HIV Prevention Leadership Summit (HPLS).

Although the primary focus of this summit is in the area of community planning, programming of the new summit has been divided into four areas:

* Diffusion of Effective Behavioral Interventions (DEBI)
* Community Planning
* HIV Prevention Integration and Linkages
* Management and Organizational Development.

Through hundreds of workshops, roundtables, poster presentations, as well as affinity sessions, participants were able to discuss progress achieved in the last year, gain knowledge and skills to enhance future planning processes, and network informally as well as learn about HIV/AIDS efforts in local, regional, and national levels. These areas proved to be effective in implementing the goal of the summit which is linking new participants of the summit including leaders from both the prevention and care side within the spectrum of HIV/AIDS services.

This year’s summit was also specifically designed to the new staff of the Centers for Disease Control’s newly funded Community Based Organizations CBOs and Capacity Building and Technical Assistance (CBA) Programs. A large number of this year’s participants were from a four-week CBA Institute conducted by the CDC as well as a one week orientation meeting for the CDC’s newly funded CBOs. The newly funded CBA programs have been designated to work in the following focus areas:

Organizational Development

  • Program Development
  • Media Campaigns/Community Mobilization
  • Community Planning Groups

For more information and event highlights, visit:

HIV Planning Leadership Summit (HPLS): http://www.nmac.org/conferences/HPLS2004/default.htm

Diffusion of Effective Behavioral Interventions: (DEBI): http://www.effectiveinterventions.org

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Advancing HIV Prevention (AHP): http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/partners/ahp_program.htm

List of New CDC funded CBOs: http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/r040521b.htm


Tabitha and Elizabeth at the Centennial Olympic Park