News: HIV/AIDS

Racial Disparities Continue among HIV/AIDS Diagnoses

March 31, 2005

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the results of HIV/AIDS data analyzed from 32 states in the United States in December of 2004. The rate of HIV/AIDS diagnosis remained stable for the years 2000-2003, but racial disparities continued.

The number of HIV cases among non-Hispanic African Americans was higher than all other racial and ethnic populations. Of the 125,800 HIV/AIDS diagnoses during this period, fifty-one percent were African Americans, while thirty-two percent were Caucasian (White), and fifteen percent were Hispanic/Latino. The remainder consisted of one percent Asian/Pacific Islanders and one percent American Indians. The data demonstrated that for African American women, the diagnosis of HIV/AIDS cases was 53 per 100,000 population, while for African American men the diagnosis was 103.4 per 100,000.

In 2003, the CDC implemented a program called Advancing HIV Prevention (AHP) in an effort to decrease these disparities. The focus of the AHP program is to increase HIV testing among populations at risk.

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