Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #116168

Hannah Cooper, ScD, NDRI/MHRA, 71 West 23rd Street - 8th Floor, New York, NY 10010, 212 845-4641, cooper@ndri.org, Samuel R. Friedman, PhD, Institute for AIDS Research, National Development and Research Institutes, 71 West 23d Street, 8th floor, New York, NY 10010, Barbara Tempalski, MA, MPH, Center for Drug Use and HIV Research, National Development and Research Institutes, 71 West 23d Street, New York, NY 10010, and Risa Friedman, MPH, Center for Drug Use and HIV Research, National Development & Research Institutes, 71 West 23rd St, New York, NY 10010.

Background: In 2002, Blacks in the USA were 11 times more likely to be diagnosed with injection-related AIDS than Whites. Based on prior theory, we hypothesized that Black/White socioeconomic inequality would be positively related to the subsequent incidence of injection-related AIDS among Blacks in 94 large US metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs).

Methods: The incidence of injection-related AIDS among Blacks in 2000 was calculated using CDC AIDS case data and US Census data on MSA sociodemographics. Measures of Black/White inequality in rates of poverty, unemployment, and educational attainment, calculated using 1990 Census data, were distilled into a single variable, “racial socioeconomic inequality,” using factor analytic methods. We used multivariate linear regression methods to test our hypothesis, controlling for confounders (including population size, percent of Blacks without health insurance, and the prevalence of injection drug use and of HIV among injectors in the MSA). MSAs were the units of analysis in this ecologic study.

Results: Racial socioeconomic inequality in 1990 was positively related to the incidence of IDU-related AIDS among Blacks in 2000 in the multivariate model (beta=0.19, p=0.0008). Our statistical model accounted for 65% of the variation in injection-related AIDS disparities in the sample.

Conclusions: As with many other studies of racial inequality, discrimination, and adverse health outcomes, this study's findings underscore the importance of eliminating racial inequality to further the public's health. Longitudinal and path analyses are needed to further elucidate the relationship between socioeconomic inequality and the incidence of IDU-related AIDS among Blacks in the USA.

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