Dispatches from the AIDS Pandemic A Public Health Story

Dispatches from the AIDS Pandemic is a unique firsthand account from three public health leaders of CDC's early response to AIDS. Drawing in part on interviews from the CDC's AIDS oral history project, the authors trace the evolution of AIDS from newly recognized disease to pandemic. The first section outlines the earliest days of the epidemic within the United States and the initial prevention strategies. The second section expands the borders of the response to Africa and Thailand, where CDC conducted its first international work on AIDS. The final section closes with an overview of the scientific and public health advancements that followed and the historic community activism that spurred essential funding and partnerships for the development of life-saving interventions.
Authentic and insightful, Dispatches from the AIDS Pandemic provides an authoritative account of an epidemic and its central role in the expansion of global public health.

Kevin M. De Cock, MD, joined CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in 1986. He was Founding Director of the CDC's HIV/AIDS research site in Cote d'Ivoire, Director of the CDC's Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention-Surveillance and Epidemiology, Founding Director of the CDC's Center for Global Health, Director of the CDC's work in Kenya, and Team Lead for Ebola responses in West and Central Africa. He is also former Professor of Medicine and International Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Director of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization.

Harold W. Jaffe, MD, began his work at CDC in its Venereal Disease Control Division. In 1981, he joined the initial Task Force on Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections. He held numerous leadership positions across the agency's HIV/AIDS program, including Director of the National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention, and later served as the CDC's Associate Director for Science. From 2004 to 2010, Dr. Jaffe was Professor and Head of the Department of Public Health at the University of Oxford, where he established the University's first MSc course in Global Health Science.

James W. Curran, MD, MPH, is former Dean and Professor of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health and Emeritus Director of the Center for AIDS Research at Emory University. From 1971-1995, he worked at CDC, where he was tapped to lead the agency's newly formed Task Force in 1981 on Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections. He continued to lead the CDC's evolving programs in HIV/AIDS throughout the 1980s and early 1990s before joining Emory.

Robin Moseley, MAT, joined CDC in 1989 as a writer-editor, with assignment to the AIDS division. She continued working in AIDS and other infectious diseases at CDC throughout her career, focusing on developing scientific and policy documents and presentations and facilitating external partnerships.

Prologue

Section I. From Unexplained Illness to Expanding Epidemic
Chapter 1. CDC and Outbreak Response
Chapter 2. The Beginning
Chapter 3. Surveillance: The Cornerstone of the Early Response
Chapter 4. Homosexual Men
Chapter 5. Heterosexual Men and Women and Injection Drug Users
Chapter 6. Haitian Americans and Haiti
Chapter 7. Mothers and Infants
Chapter 8. Blood and Blood Products
Chapter 9. HIV: Discovery, Diagnosis, and Disease
Chapter 10. Responding to Fears: Real and Imagined Threats
Chapter 11. Making Predictions

Section II. CDC and the Early International Response to AIDS
Chapter 12. Working Internationally
Chapter 13. Projet SIDA in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Chapter 14. Jonathan Mann: Past as Prologue
Chapter 15. HIV-2 and Projet RETRO-CI in Cote d'Ivoire
Chapter 16. The HIV/AIDS Collaboration in Thailand

Section III. The Modern AIDS Era
Chapter 17. Advances in Science and Public Health
Chapter 18. Origins
Chapter 19. HIV Science: Increased Understanding, Improved Outcomes
Chapter 20. CDC in the Modern AIDS Era
Chapter 21. WHO and the Evolving AIDS Pandemic
Chapter 22. CDC and the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)

Epilogue