Aetna Student Health to Sponsor Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.

-- Aetna to Sponsor Special Events and Sports Championships, Provide Scholarship Grants for Medical and Internship Programs --

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Aetna (NYSE:AET) today announced that it will serve as a corporate sponsor of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC), comprised of Shaw University, Stillman College, Tuskegee University and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). As part of the two-year agreement, Aetna will sponsor several special events and sports championships, including the SIAC Men's & Women's Basketball Tournament, as well as provide scholarship grants to SIAC institutions for medical training and internship programs.

"We're excited about the potential that the SIAC sponsorship offers," said John Webb, head of Government and Business Alliances for Aetna. "It will allow us to engage the HBCU community in a dialogue about the health care issues affecting the African-American and student populations."

Aetna joins Alabama Power, Nike, Coca Cola, Holiday Inn, Atlanta Inquirer and ESPN as a corporate sponsor of SIAC. Aetna will be the exclusive health insurance sponsor of the conference.

"Aetna is leading the way in finding and implementing solutions that address the problems of racial and ethnic inequality in health care, health literacy and the uninsured," explains Webb. "The SIAC sponsorship will allow us to learn more about the health needs of African-Americans in higher education so we can further customize our health solutions to meet the needs of our minority and student members."

Aetna Student Health provides high-quality, innovative health insurance programs to more than 450,000 undergraduate and graduate students at colleges and universities across the nation. "Aetna is committed to helping keep students healthy and to providing competitively priced options for the more than 4 million college and university students who are currently uninsured," said Paul Silva, president of Aetna Student Health. "Through collaboration with our college and university customers, Aetna Student Health is defining a new standard for student health insurance in the higher education marketplace."

About Aetna

Aetna is one of the nation's leading diversified health care benefits companies, serving approximately 36.7 million people with information and resources to help them make better informed decisions about their health care. Aetna offers a broad range of traditional and consumer-directed health insurance products and related services, including medical, pharmacy, dental, behavioral health, group life and disability plans, and medical management capabilities and health care management services for Medicaid plans. Our customers include employer groups, individuals, college students, part-time and hourly workers, health plans, governmental units, government-sponsored plans, labor groups and expatriates. www.aetna.com.