“Continuing racial disparities in HIV infection more than 2 decades after the identification of the virus and availability of an accurate test are an indictment of the U.S. response to the epidemic,” state the article in the November 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“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” wrote head author Dr. Adaora A. Adimora.
The prevalence of HIV in African Americans is ten times the white population despite billions of dollars in government and private effort.
45 percent of new HIV infections in the U.S. in 2006 occurred among non-Hispanic blacks states The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health of Among the 13,184 adolescents and young adults found HIV seroprevalence almost 0.5 percent among blacks – 20 times higher than whites.
Observed differences in individual behaviors do not fully explain the marked racial differences in HIV infection prevalence.
The study claims that power and social inequality restricts peoples access calling “structural violence” that restricts a group of people from realizing their full potential and put them “in harm’s way.”
“There is a need for research and interventions that are informed by expertise in public health, medicine, basic science, and social sciences .– along with expertise in economics, business and finance, education, criminal justice, political science, and other disciplines” said Adimora.
Governments should be held accountable for progress in eliminating inequities, she said.
