The Vineeta Foundation was founded in 1995 by Vineeta Rastogi

Vineeta Rastogi

Vineeta Rastogi was an Indian-American AIDS activist, public health worker and Peace Corps Volunteer in Democratic Republic of the Congo....

. She and her husband, Brian Hennessey, learned that Ms. Rastogi had terminal Cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

 in the same year and decided to start a foundation to continue her public health and human rights work, with a particular focus on HIV/AIDS pandemic

Pandemic

A pandemic is an epidemic of infectious disease that is spreading through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic...

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Part of the foundation's innovative work involves extensive overland travel to discover the health and human rights issues in a region, seeking formal and informal organizations that are successfully dealing with these problems and their cultural context. The foundation then implements a pilot program involving as many of these players as possible and then presents the findings at the International AIDS Conference

International AIDS Conference

The International AIDS Society is the custodian of the International AIDS Conference, the largest regular conference on any health or development issue. These conferences provide a forum for the interaction of science, community and leadership, and are claimed to strengthen an evidence-based...

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The foundation is chaired by Radia Daoussi, a Fulbright Scholar and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Scholar trained at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.