Twenty-Two Percent of Americans Followed Coverage of U.N. Special Session on HIV/AIDS, KFF/Harvard Survey Says

Twenty-two percent of Americans followed the U.N. General Assembly's special session on HIV/AIDS recently held in New York City in June, according to a poll in the July/August edition of the Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health's Health News Index. The survey of 1,005 adults found that between June 25, 2001, and July 25, 2001, 7% of respondents followed coverage of the summit "very closely," while 15% followed the event "fairly closely" (Health News Index, July/August 2001). A poll of 1,001 adults in the May/June edition of the Health News Index showed that 43% of survey participants said that they followed the issue of the U.N. Global AIDS and Health Fund "very" (15%) or "fairly" (28%) closely between April 25, 2001, and May 25, 2001. However, only 9% of respondents correctly answered that the United States has agreed to contribute to the fund, while 63% said that they did not know whether the nation had pledged money (Health News Index, May/June 2001).