AIDS In the South

J reported the other day on this, but here it is again in a different source. The article reads,

AIDS specialists are calling for a fundamental rethinking of HIV policy after a new report showed that infection with the virus was rising dramatically in the South even as it dropped everywhere else in the country.

One explanation is the high rate of Black male imprisonment. Raphael and Johnson have a forthcoming Journal of Law and Economics article showing that controlling for lagged incarceration eliminates the racial disparity entirely, for instance.

This statistic was startling.

“African-American women are 83 percent of all [new] cases that we can document,” said Bambi Gaddist, executive director of the South Carolina HIV/AIDS Council and a member of the AIDS Coalition board of directors. “And the new epidemic is young people. They’re between 22 and 24.”