A new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that Black women are diagnosed with HIV at disproportionately high rates relative to White and Hispanic/Latina women.
The report finds that despite recent progress that has seen new HIV diagnoses decrease by 21 percent from 2010 to 2016, Black women still account for 60% of all the new HIV infections among women.
Blacks/African Americans account for a higher proportion of new HIV diagnoses and people living with HIV, compared to other races/ethnicities. In 2017, blacks/African Americans accounted for 13% of the US population but 43% (16,694) of the 38,739 new HIV diagnoses in the United States and dependent areas.
The research explored data concerning HIV that was collected over a seven-year period and used a model to measure the disparity among different groups called the population attributable proportion, or PAP.
That model found that African American women are hit hardest by HIV as the rate of diagnosis is 15 times as high as that of white women, and almost five time that of Latino women. In fact, HIV/AIDS-related illness is among the leading causes of death for black women ages 25-34, the CDC says.
