Putting it all together: Lessons from the Jackson HIV outbreak investigation

摘要

One needs to only glance at a map of HIV prevalence in the United States to realize that the Southeast is disproportionately impacted (Fig. 1). Although this region contains more than one third of the national population, more than half of all newly diagnosed cases of HIV came from the South in 2010. Inequity in the social determinants of health has served to concentrate a variety of communicable and noncommunicable diseases among the South's poor and disadvantaged, of whom blacks make up of an outsized proportion. Recent estimates suggest that 1 in every 5 southern black men who have sex with men (MSM) are living with HIV infection, a number nearly 5 times that of southern white MSM. In the past several years, the epidemic has begun to affect young MSM more greatly. In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that young, black MSM aged 13 to 29 years experienced a 48% increase in HIV incidence from 2006 to 2009.5 Unfortunately, such statistics are no longer surprising for those of us living in the South and providing care for trie scores of young, black MSM being diagnosed with HIV each year.