Although they are the fastest-growing segment of the HIV-infected population in the U.S., 6 of 10 women of color believe they have no chance of contracting AIDS, according to a recently released national survey.
In addition, 84 percent of African-American and 83 percent of Latinas, the two highest-risk groups of women of color, say that they have no chance or a low chance of getting AIDS, the report of the 1991-1992 Women of Color Reproductive Health Poll says.
The survey questioned 1,157 African-American, Asian, Latin and Native American females age 18 and older in 1991. It was sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based Communications Consortium Media Center, a public-interest media-consulting firm, and the National Council of Negro Women, the report says.
The beliefs revealed in this poll conflict with the realities of AIDS in the `90s, as demonstrated by Illinois Department of Health Statistics. Although men account for 90 percent of the 6,382 cases of AIDS reported in Illinois to date, from 1990 to 1991 the number of infected women jumped 83 percent, from 89 to 163, the department reports.
The majority of those cases are minority women and particularly African-American females, says Chet Kelly, chief of the Department`s AIDS Activity Section. In 1991, reported AIDS cases among African-American women rose 123 percent, from 48 cases reported in 1990 to 107, and cases for Hispanic females increased 45 percent from 11 to 16, the department says.
While Illinois is considered a ”moderate incidence” state for AIDS and ranks sixth in the nation in number of cases, it reflects the national picture in terms of trends and distribution of cases, says Kelly. New York has the most reported AIDS cases in the U.S., followed by California, Florida, Texas and New Jersey, he says.
The upsurge of AIDS in minority women is due to several factors, including the misperception that it is a homosexual white male`s disease that doesn`t affect heterosexual females, Kelly says. He also suggests a lack of empowerment that prevents many women of color from taking steps to protect their health. ”It`s difficult to insist that their partners use condoms, and when you`re talking about disease transmission, that`s what you need to do,” he says.
Misperceptions about who is susceptible to AIDS also help explain the gap between the survey`s findings of what women of color believe is their AIDS risk and the reality of their situation, according to Kelly. Denial is another factor, says Eleanor Hinton-Hoytt, director of programs for the National Council of Negro Women.
”We don`t deal with the fact that we have sex,” Hinton-Hoytt says. ”We say we don`t have abortions, but statistics show we do. We say we don`t have bisexual and intravenous drug-using partners, but we do. It is all denial.”
The Women of Color Reproductive Health Poll report concludes that
”doctors and other health professionals are at least partly to blame for this lack of awareness about AIDS.”
The poll included a follow-up survey in 1992 of 302 African-American women, ages 18-45, to find out why 59 percent of the respondents at risk of unintended pregnancy in the first survey said they didn`t use birth control, according to Emily Tynes, deputy director of the Communications Consortium Media Center. Thirty-two percent of this second sample indicated they didn`t use birth control because they can`t afford it, are afraid of the side effects or don`t like it, according to the report. Ninety percent of American women at risk of unintended pregnancy report using contraceptives, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute.
Other findings of the Women of Color Reproductive Health Poll indicate that ”while most respondents said they had access to medical care and preventive services, there are significant disparities, particularly among Native Americans and Asians. Preventive health services . . . must be made available to all women who need them,” the report says.
The disparities include:
– More than two-thirds of respondents said they had a ”special doctor”
(gynecologist), but only 36 percent of Native American women stated this.
– 90 percent indicated having had Pap smears to screen for cervical cancer at some point, but only 71 percent of Asian females reported this.
– 52 percent of the sample said they had undergone mammograms to test for the presence of breast cancer, as compared with 40 percent of Asian and 32 percent of Native American respondents.
Some of these results stem from cultural differences, according to Hinton-Hoytt. In the Asian community, girls may not be encouraged to get physical exams because it would mean exposing their bodies, she says. Sterilization of Native American women has been ”pushed” by the federal government as a form of birth control without counseling and sometimes without complete information about the irreversibility of the procedure, according to Tynes.
