Australasian Society for HIV Medicine

When the Western Australian Liberals and Nationals finally formed a Government  the day before the Australasian Sexual Health Conference began  it promised to be an interesting media week ahead of us. Things got even more fascinating when, a day later, the first of the conference,   Brendan Nelson declared a spill for the Federal Liberal party Leadership.
Yep, the Australasian Sexual Health Conference  2008 and ASHM Conference took place amidst what we media buffs like to call “Noise”. And there was plenty of it. “Noise” can be an intimidating thing, threatening to drown out all your best laid plans to attract media coverage. Yet curiously it can work to your advantage too if you play your cards right or on other occasions you can only sit back and watch  a beautiful collision of   subject matter and timeliness  take over.

But you´ve still got have the stories to pitch and pleasingly both conferences had plenty of meat to throw around.

Basil Donovan and his colleagues´ Three city profile of sex work was always going to attract attention, especially in Perth where the Libs had  declared their intention to criminalise sex work during the election campaign.  AAP (their health writer  was onsite writing 3-4 stories each day)) ran  a story on it on Monday  and coincidentally as it was hitting the wires, news had come through that a HIV positive sex worker had been jailed in the ACT. Scarlet Alliance got into full swing with a media release and by the end of the day both the sexworker city profile and Scarlet´s response were being meshed in together as one story, making it an even stronger news piece. By mid week The Daily Telegraph was running a four story special feature focus on sex work in Australia, Sydney was being talked of as the Golden city for sex work in Asia Pacific newspapers and Donovan was still fielding calls on Friday from WA journalists wanting to run follow up pieces the next week.

The biggest story of the conference though was the coming together of  the NCHECR Annual Surveillance figures, Darren Russell´s  HIV cluster research and the mining boom in WA. AAP´s story on the surveillance figures quoted AFAO´s  Don Baxter, Darren Russell, John Kaldor and Trish Langdon. The story was picked up widely on the wires  and a major  lead piece  on page 3  ran in   the The Australian on Wednesday 17th September.

Subsequently, radio and TV picked up the stories, resulting in numerous media requests. (Darren Russell gave some 20 media interviews, Don Baxter some 15 and Trish Langdon some 8 interviews.) Both ABC TV and Channel 10 TV visited the convention centre to conduct interviews with Kaldor, Baxter, Mitchell, Russell and Rowland for their evening news bulletins.

The linking of  the Mining  boom economics, tourism in the Asia Pacific and HIV increases gave the story  an international focus and the AAP piece was subseqently picked up by other wire agencies such as AFP and Reuters and then carried overseas to their subscribers such as:
BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7628885.stm
France 24 www.france24.com/en/20080917-mining-boom-linked-australias-hiv-rise
The New York Times: www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/09/17/asia/OUKWD-UK-AIDS-AUSTRALIA.php    

The stories that attracted major press coverage were (in ascending order):

Calls to screen young people for chlaymdia  http://news.theage.com.au/national/call-to-screen-youngsters-for-chlamydia-20080915-4gss.html (some 15 hits nationally)

Aussies no Love Rats or are they? http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24355995-29277,00.html (some 50 hits nationally)

Oral Sex is the New Black http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24354206-29277,00.html (some 50 hits nationally)

Viagra, Ice, link to HIV: Expert http://news.theage.com.au/national/viagra-ice-linked-to-hiv-expert-20080918-4isl.html  (some 50 hits nationally)

Sydney the Best city for Sex Workers http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24348679-5005961,00.html (some 60 hits nationally and internationally)

Australian mining boom linked to HIV Spike http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnSYD52638.html (some 60 hits nationally and internationally)

The syphillis epidemic in WA, the HPV vaccine and other variations on the chlamydia theme also got runs.

ABC current affairs and news radio ran extensive coverage of the conference issues. The HIV increases/Mining boom story was a lead video news report on ABC´s news website during  2 days of the conference – some examples of stories that ran on ABC are below:

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2365943.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2367152.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2366860.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2008/s2367468.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/17/2366590.htm

We ran an opinión piece in Jonathan Anderson´s name in the Australian on Saturday  September 13. www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24331444-23289,00.html

ABC Radio´s Norman Swan  came to the conference on Thursday and ran a piece on Monday September 22. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/healthreport/stories/2008/2368911.htm