OVERVIEW

In the United States, HIV was first reported in women in 1983 among those who had been steady sexual partners of males with acquired immune deficiency syndrome.1 Although men with HIV still outnumber women, the number of women with HIV has increased rapidly. At the end of 2010 an estimated one in four people with HIV in the United States was female.2

African American women bear a disproportionate burden of the disease (TABLE 1).3 In 2010, women accounted for an estimated 9,500 (20%) of the approximately 45,000 new infections occurring in the United States. Of these newly infected women, 64% were black, 18% were white, and 15% were Hispanic. Yet blacks make up only about 12% of the US population, whites make up 68%, and Hispanics 14%.