(USA TODAY) -- President Obama will gather AIDS experts at the White House today to launch the first national strategy designed to cut new infections, boost the number of people who get tested and treated, and reduce disparities in access to care.

The report notes that 1.1 million people in the USA are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and an additional 56,000 become infected each year, according to statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yet many Americans no longer view HIV as an urgent health problem, despite the misery it causes and its potential for further spread, the report says.

"Unless we take bold actions," it warns, "we face a new era of rising infections, greater challenges in serving people living with HIV, and higher health care costs."

These actions include intensifying HIV prevention efforts in communities hit hardest by the disease; the use of a variety of prevention methods because "no single 'magic bullet' will stem the tide of new HIV infections"; and the first national effort in decades to educate "all Americans about the threat of HIV and how to prevent it."

By 2015, the White House seeks to:

*Reduce new HIV infections by 25%.

*Cut the rate of the virus' spread by 30%, from five people a year infected by every 100 living with HIV to 3.5 per 100.

*Increase from 79% to 90% the percentage of HIV-positive people who know they're infected with the virus so they can get treatment.

Michael Saag of the University of Alabama-Birmingham, president of the HIV Medical Association, praises the effort to reduce new infections as "obtainable and pretty realistic."

Judy Auerbach, director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, one of a group of activists that pushed Obama and other presidential aspirants for a national strategy during the last election, says the report "reflects the sense that we need to hone in on a few key things that must be done to really radically reduce infections and the size of the epidemic in the U.S."

Auerbach says the line between prevention and treatment "has become blurred" because research shows that people who know they're HIV-positive and get treated are less likely to spread HIV. That's partly because people who know they're infected are more cautious with sexual partners. Evidence also suggests that people who get treated are less infectious even if they do engage in unsafe sex, she says.

Copyright 2010 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.