Women and HIV: A story of racial and ethnic health disparities

The history of women with HIV/AIDS in the United States is really a story of racial and ethnic health disparities. Overall, the rate of American women contracting the disease relative to men has climbed from 8 percent in the 1980s to 25 percent today. But most of this burden is in underserved communities: one in 32 African-American women will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime, as will one in 106 Latina women. Meanwhile, one in 526 Caucasian and Asian women will contract the virus. Death rates are also higher for African-American and Latina women, making it one of the leading causes of death for those groups. Researchers at Yale's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) are examining the many and complex reasons for these disparities with a variety of studies that consider how behavioral and cultural factors may be putting minority women at disproportionate risk. Cultural norms "The spread of HIV, in theory, could be prevented," says Sarah K. Calabrese, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at CIRA, who is studying how social, psychological and behavioral factors affect HIV acquisition.