HIV prevalence and impact in African American populations

HIV in African-American Women:

Does Race Impact Disease Prevalence and Outcome?

This paper explores five published articles that examine HIV / AIDS in the African-American community, focusing on African-American females. The goal of the literature review was to examine whether African-American women are at higher risk of contracting HIV than other women and whether their race appears to impact the course of the disease. The literature review did show higher rates of HIV among African-American women and poorer disease progression in African-American women with HIV / AIDS.

HIV in African-American Women: Does Race Impact Disease Prevalence and Outcome?

Numerous studies have been conducted to determine whether African-American women face a greater risk of contracting HIV than women of other races and whether they have a different disease outcome than others with HIV / AIDS. In 2011, Inungu et al. looked at the prevalence of HIV testing in samples of U.S. adolescents and youth, the location and method of testing used during their last HIV testing, and compared those who had been tested with those who had not been tested (Inungu et al., 2011). What was interesting was that the information revealed that being female and being African-American were both highly correlated with having been tested for HIV (Inungu et al., 2011). This suggests that African-American females are not unaware of their risk of contracting HIV and do take positive steps to ensure their health. However, the overall low rates of adolescent and youth HIV testing makes it clear that testing is still low among all segments of the adolescent population, including African-American females.

The HIV Incidence Surveillance Group looked at the incidence of HIV in the United States, taking information from 16 states and 2 cities. They found no overall change in incidence from 2006 to 2009 in any specific race/ethnicity or risk groups. However, they did find a very significant (21%) increase in prevalence in youth aged 13-29, which was driven by escalating rates of HIV in homosexual males, particularly African-American males who have sex with other males (Prejean et al., 2011). Despite the fact that rates remained relatively stable, the authors concluded that HIV continues to be a major public health burden, particularly among racial and ethnic minorities (Prejean et al., 2011).

Muturi and an looked at how cultural factors might contribute to higher HIV prevalence in African-American communities. It noted that African-American women are disproportionately impacted by HIV / AIDS, accounting for 67% of all women diagnosed with HIV (Muturi & an, 2010). Their study looked at whether and to what extent religiosity played a role in stigma towards HIV / AIDS (Muturi & an, 2010). What they found was that religiosity played a significant role in predicting the level of religious stigma, which led to beliefs that HIV/ADIS might be a curse or punishment from God (Muturi & an, 2010). This leads to the conclusion that faith-based organizations could play an important role in HIV / AIDS prevention and treatment in the community.

Anyone familiar with HIV research is aware of the high correlation between drug using populations and HIV infection, because addicts engage in practices like needle sharing and are more likely to engage in unprotected sex with unknown partners. Therefore, one would expect that HIV prevalence would be higher among African-American women in detoxification than in other groups given that the prevalence is higher in the regular population. What they found was that whites and Hispanics had higher levels of total HIV risk scores and risky injection use scores than African-Americans (Wu et al., 2010). This suggests that there is not an easy to understand correlation between drug use and risk behavior when considered from the HIV context.