The sexual health of minority women is at a disproportionate risk to HIV, but wellness experts have struggled to determine why. While one in 526 Caucasian and Asian women will contract the virus, a HIV diagnosis will affect the wellbeing of one in 32 African-American women, and one in 106 Latina women, and the rate of death from HIV is far higher in these two groups also. So far, studies investigating this problem have shown wide disparities in their results, and so researchers at Yale’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) are examining the many and complex reasons for these disparities, as well as the behavioural and cultural factors that may be putting minority women at disproportionate risk.
According to Sarah K. Calabrese, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at CIRA, who is studying how social, psychological and behavioural factors affect HIV acquisition, ‘The spread of HIV, in theory, could be prevented.’ She has found that many African-American women accept the idea that sex should be used as a commodity, which is associated with a negative sexual self-concept. This means that African-American women are more likely to take sexual risks, and Calabrese noted, ‘The findings speak to the need to make changes in the culture.’
For Lisa Rosenthal, PhD, a CIRA postdoctoral fellow, intervention programmes can help to reduce women’s HIV risk, as well as other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), while also improving pregnancy outcomes. A pilot study in clinics in Atlanta and New Haven, in which 80% of the participants were African-American, found that group intervention reduced young women’s risks of becoming pregnant again within six months, increased their use of condoms and reduced the incidence of STIs at the end of their pregnancies.
Rosenthal used the data gathered from the project to establish a connection between discrimination and sexual health. She asserted that discrimination can lead to risky sexual behaviours and contracting an STI during pregnancy. ‘This finding adds to an ever-growing body of literature demonstrating the far-reaching, deleterious effects of discrimination,’ Rosenthal commented. ‘It suggests that we must find ways to reduce discrimination to reduce disparities and improve health, including the reduction of a woman’s risk of contracting HIV and other STIs.’
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