Racial Disparities Persist in Prevalence of HIV Infection
by -- Rick Ansorge Updated: Oct 12th 2009
MONDAY, Oct. 12 (HealthDay News) -- More than 20 years after the identification of HIV, the racial disparity between African-Americans and Caucasians in HIV prevalence has persisted despite massive governmental and private efforts to contain the AIDS epidemic, according to a study published online Oct. 6 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Adaora A. Adimora, M.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues cited statistics showing that HIV prevalence is 20 times higher among African-American adolescents and young adults than among Caucasian adolescents and young adults, and that non-Hispanic African-Americans accounted for 45 percent of new HIV infections in the United States in 2006.
Even after adjusting for factors such as age at first sexual intercourse, lifetime number of sex partners, history of male homosexual activity, and illicit drug use, the researchers found that HIV prevalence among African-Americans was still substantially higher than among Caucasians.
"Existing interventions have failed to control the epidemic in African-Americans in part because critical features of the socioeconomic context promote behaviors that transmit HIV and increase the risk of HIV infection even among those who do not have high-risk behaviors," the authors write. "Failure to address these structural determinants has allowed the epidemic to continue in the black community. There is a need for research and interventions that are informed by expertise in public health, medicine, basic science, and the social sciences -- along with expertise in economics, business and finance, education, criminal justice, political science, and other disciplines."
