The Impact of HIV on the Women of Ohio
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Date
2011-08
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Publisher
The Ohio State University
Abstract
Over the past few decades, the face of HIV has considerably changed nationwide. In 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) created National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. According to Centers for Disease Control (CDC), women composed about 20% of all new AIDS diagnoses nationwide in 2008--a marked increase from 10% in the 1980s. Many recent US news publications have also pointed out that HIV has been spreading largely via heterosexual contact through impoverished communities thus placing women at high risk. In Ohio, women make up 20% of those living with HIV. HIV heavily impacts ethnic minorities with African American women making up roughly two-thirds of all women living with HIV/AIDS and those being infected each year in the state of Ohio. The first part of this study aims to assess the trends in HIV transmission in Ohio’s women over seven years and what demographics and regions are disproportionately affected. To do so, surveillance data from the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) was collected for years 2003-2009 and analyzed through the visual data tool Gapminder.
Since HIV often disproportionately impacts marginalized groups and communities, it is important not only to pay attention to risk factors that place an individual at risk of HIV infection--injection drug use, unprotected sex, and lack of access to testing and treatment--but also contextual factors such as poverty, conspiracy beliefs, trust in healthcare system that place whole communities and demographics at higher risk of HIV infection and impede access to care. Thus, the second part of this study is a literature review on the social, economic and cultural factors that may perpetuate the spread of HIV in the women of Ohio, especially within urban-dwelling, impoverished women. This literature review helps make sense of the trend of HIV transmission in Ohio’s women. Since little published HIV research exists for the state of Ohio, a database search on PubMed and Google Scholar was expanded to include data from various other states and aggregate nationwide data. This literature review is beneficial because there are no studies that have explored contextual factors that place women at risk for HIV in the state of Ohio.
Description
Arts & Sciences Undergraduate Research Grant
Keywords
HIV, Ohio, Women, Socioeconomic, Health Disparities, STIs