Zeitschrift für Suchtforschung und -therapie

Abstrakt

AIDS in Black America: A Study of the City of Chicago

Arthur Horton

There is an epidemic of HIV/AIDS in African American women in United States, and it is devastating black communities. There is a disproportionate outbreak among black women and adolescents; they are especially at risk these days. They are being infected through unprotected sexual intercourse, drug use and babies being born with AIDS because the mother is infected. Because such a large proportion of black females who carry the disease live in poverty, there is minimal health care, either as prevention or maintenance of victims of the virus. This study examines a possible success story in coping with the epidemic as found in the dramatic decrease of the HIV/ AIDS death rates for the city of Chicago. It considers the effects of educational achievement of blacks in relation to the decline in HIV related deaths over a decade in Chicago. Some of the results are surprising and not as hypothesized, for example increases in education did not uniformly lead to a decrease in AID cases. The impact of HIV/AID regarding black females was as hypothesized. The number of cases increased over the decade and at a statistically significant level.