“Project Runway” Designer Educates About Living with HIV and AIDS

Today on World AIDS Day, Jack Mackenroth, from the hit reality television series “Project Runway,” has launched the next video in the online video series called “Living Positive By Design: Creating Positive Conversations” as part of the national HIV and AIDS education initiative, Living Positive By Design. The campaign, supported by Merck & Co., Inc., aims to encourage thoughtful conversations about HIV and AIDS, to confront HIV stigma and motivate HIV-positive people to have a positive outlook on life while effectively managing their disease.

“Today on World AIDS Day, it is important for people living with HIV to have a positive outlook on life while effectively managing their disease. That’s why for the past year, I have partnered with Merck on Living Positive By Design, which seeks to combat the stigma associated with the disease,” said Mackenroth. “Having lived with HIV and AIDS myself for more than 20 years, World AIDS Day is a special day, and it gives me hope to think about how far we’ve come in treatment and research since the very first World AIDS Day.”

The next video in the “Living Positive By Design: Creating Positive Conversations” will be available for download on World AIDS Day. The video features Jack interviewing Dr. Michael Gottlieb, Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at the UCLA School of Medicine; Marjorie J. Hill, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC); and Robert Walker, creator of the comic book, “O+ Men.” The video features each of these influential individuals in the HIV and AIDS landscape discussing the important initiatives and achievements that they have been a part of in the fight against the disease.

To download the “Living Positive By Design: Creating Positive Conversations” video and widget featuring the World AIDS Day interviews, and to learn more about the campaign, please visit: www.LivingPositiveByDesign.com.

Prevalence of HIV and AIDS

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2006 there were more than one million Americans living with HIV and AIDS. In the same year, an estimated 56,000 new cases were diagnosed in the U.S. Forty-nine percent of new diagnoses were among African Americans and 50 percent were among men who have sex with men (MSM).