Are White Women at Risk?

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Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control provide some interesting information about white women. Women's infection rates are rising, and the vast majority of new infections are among black women and Latinas. As of June 1998, women accounted for 32 percent of all adult cases of AIDS and 49 percent of cases among people 13 to 24 years of age. Of these, 23 percent are white women, 56 percent black women, 22 percent Latinas, and less than 1 percent each Asian and Native American women. But when that breakdown is compared with the number of people of each race in the overall population, a better sense of the impact of AIDS in different communities emerges. White people are the largest racial group in the United States, so the number of white women with AIDS actually represents a smaller proportion of their racial group than would an equal number of black women or Latinas. Statisticians measure incidence by looking at the number of cases per 100,000 of population. Looked at this way, among every 100,000 white people, three will be women with AIDS. This compares with the Latin community, where the ratio is 22 per 100,000, or African-Americans, where 59 of every 100,000 people are women with AIDS. It is no wonder that prevention funding is targeted at populations of color.