Eliminating capitalist determinants of HIV inequalities

In the context of a collapsing world economy and continuing war, current US health policies cannot end the HIV epidemic. The National HIV Action Strategy calls for linkage to care, testing, and peer involvement, yet Congress is cutting resources to alleviate the poverty and discrimination that create inequality. Free-market socioeconomic factors create disproportionate rates of HIV among people oppressed by racism, low socioeconomic position, and marginalization. Poverty explains a significant portion of HIV rates among urban heterosexual people. In all of the transmission categories, African Americans bear the heaviest burden of HIV in the United States. Capitalist economies require racism to maximize profits: Black workers earn less than 75 percent of the median wages of White workers. Ideologically, racism divides and weakens the working class, e.g. blaming immigrant workers for stealing jobs or Black workers for criminal behavior. An egalitarian system that abolishes profit and a wage system can eliminate racist structures of opportunity and overcome the inequalities in the burden of HIV. This presentation will contrast HIV related capitalist structures with socialist and communist models of social organization and health strategies. Public health workers can build a social movement to prevent these fundamental causes of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.