Press Release: HIV Infections in US Disproportionately Impact Communities of Color and the Poor
HIV Specialists Meet to Identify, Help Those Who are Falling Through the Cracks
WASHINGTON, DC (May 31, 2012) – With mounting evidence that many Americans remain the invisible people with HIV/AIDS who live in poverty, have limited health literacy, are diagnosed late in the course of their disease, and therefore, are the most likely to die of AIDS, leading members of the HIV/AIDS community called for a new mobilization to find, test and treat those people with HIV who are falling through the cracks of the healthcare system.
Meeting in San Francisco at a conference convened by the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research, HIV experts and advocates mapped a pathway to reduce disparities in HIV/AIDS, applying the lessons learned from the Bay Area where disparities exist across the spectrum of care. In San Francisco alone, it is estimated that as many as a third (33%) of the African American men who have sex with men (MSM) live with HIV. Moreover, across the Bay Area, almost a third (32%) of those infected with HIV and especially low-income African Americans and Hispanics, older residents, and immigrants are “late testers” who develop AIDS within a year of diagnosis and enter the healthcare system when treatment outcomes are poor.
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