John Newsome has been tapped to organize the Coalition's U.S. Impact Initiative. Newsome blends extensive experience on HIV with exceptional management, strategy and leadership abilities. His background includes writing the City of San Francisco's HIV plan for African American MSM and, as a consultant with the Bridgespan Group, strategy development for clients including the Gates Foundation.

One of the obvious skills business can contribute to the U.S. Impact Initiative is marketing. How will marketing contribute to the initiative's success?

Getting the right people tested in the U.S. context requires a savvy that businesses very much have, which is deep customer segmentation, targeting, micro-targeting-that's something that the business community has done very well, and for a long time. Most businesses know very well who their customers are, what their likes and dislikes are, how to reach them and where they live. And at this stage in the epidemic that's precisely what's required.

We don't need to reach everyone, but we need to reach some people very deeply. And that's something that every company knows how to do well. They know their customer profile and they know how to reach them. That's one of the places where hopefully we can leverage business expertise to the benefit of our entire community, and our entire nation.

But the initiative needs competencies other than marketing.

Right, it's our hope that we can pursue a multi-prong approach. There's a great opportunity to engage CEOs in advocacy around testing and also around the development of the national AIDS strategy with the Obama administration. Business can encourage testing via large-scale employee engagement and education programs.

In this case, the thing that we want people to do is to get educated and informed about the epidemic as it stands today. So business can engage in the local community via local government and civic groups to help create targeted community education and to help ensure that organizations on the ground have the support and resources they need to be effective in addressing the epidemic.

How are you ensuring that the U.S. Impact Initiative focuses on the right interventions?

It's really important that this initiative be data-driven and informed by the best information available about the epidemic. We need to identify where it's having the greatest impact, and which strategies will make the greatest difference.

Part of what we're doing now is talking with experts in the field, health providers, AIDS service organizations, the Centers for Disease Control and others to really understand where there are gaps and where business can have the greatest impact. It is critical that we show up as partners and contribute to the effort knowing that we have particular expertise, while still honoring and recognizing the role and expertise that others currently hold.

GBC is about coordination across sectors and collective action. Our job is also to identify the highest-impact agenda for business.

Washington, D.C. was recently revealed to have a three percent HIV prevalence rate. What does that mean for the U.S.?

The HIV epidemic in the United States is taking a tremendous toll on the lives of individual people, and obviously affects every aspect of our communities, including our businesses and our government.

Three percent doesn't sound like a lot, but when you consider that that three percent is disproportionately concentrated in certain sub-communities and certain neighborhoods-you look at the impact on African-American men, where prevalence is estimated to be about seven percent-and then you look at what happens when you play that out over time; it's very easy to get from seven percent to 10 percent to 20 percent.

By then you're looking at an epidemic that is incredibly devastating.

What will it take to turn those numbers around?

We want people to get educated and informed about the epidemic. It looks different today than the epidemic did 10 years ago, which is why re-engaging people, encouraging them to test and getting them into care, is one of the cornerstones of the U.S. Impact Initiative.

Testing in particular is one of the most important things we can do to stem the progress of this epidemic. It's making sure that people who are at risk for HIV know their status, and can protect themselves if they are negative. We need to ensure that people who test positive can get into care as quickly as possible and save their own lives, and also ensure they don't expose others to HIV.

» Learn more about GBC's U.S. Impact Initiative