Of the NNPA
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – A new study says even though Blacks ages 18-26 are practicing safer sex than their White counterparts, they still are “nearly 25 times more likely to be infected than White young people engaging in the same behavior.”
The study, titled “Sexual and Drug Behavior Patterns and HIV/STD Racial Disparities: The Need for New Directions,” shows Black youth in this age group aren’t drinking, smoking or using drugs as much as Whites their age, but statistically they have a greater chance of having sex with someone who has an STD because the prevalence is so high in the Black community.
“The interesting thing about the paper is that it’s saying for African-Americans, it’s not about your behavior. It’s about probably you’re partner’s behavior and whether your partner has a sexually transmitted infection,” said the study’s lead author Denise Hallfors.
Hallfors, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Chapel Hill, N.C., said her findings were based on the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescents. Nearly 9,000 young people, Black and White, were surveyed in 1995 and data was collected again in 2001.
In addition to asking the young people about their sexual behavior, Hallfors said they were also tested for STDs. Then, researchers classified the participants in 16 different behavior “clusters” ranging from what Hallfors said was, “everything from never had sex, never did any substances, to people who sell sex for money.”
She said for young Blacks who tended to have the least risky behavior—fewest sexual partners and little or no drug or alcohol use—the chances of them catching an STD was eight to 10 times higher.
“For African-Americans even in the lowest risk, most conventional group—instead of 3 percent for Whites, it was 20 percent that had some kind of HIV or STD,” Hallfors said.
This news was especially disturbing to 22-year-old Howard University student Shari Logan.
“Immediately I thought that the odds are always against us as a young, African-American. You’re trying to do what’s right and you’re saying, ‘Okay I’m not going to be stupid and have sex with everyone, I’m still just going to kind of play it safe and use a condom’ and yet you’re still—you’re chances are greater? So I thought wow, what can you do except maybe just complete abstinence?”
Jennifer Kates, Vice President and Director of HIV Policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation, said Logan is right and that abstinence is the only 100 percent effective way to prevent STDs.
“The Centers for Disease and Control, National Institutes of Health and most organizations recommend if you choose to have sex, use a condom correctly every time. So the message (of the study) is not a message that what you’re (Black youth) doing is not what other young people might be doing sexually, it’s that if you choose to have sex you have to have safer sex. The chances of a Black young person coming into contact with somebody who’s HIV positive when they have sex are higher,” Kates said.
Hallfors said there were a number of reasons why it’s easier for a young Black person to come across a partner with an STD.
“African-Americans have sex with other African-Americans for the most part, Whites have sex with Whites for the most part. So that combination of segregated sexual networks and then African-Americans there’s more of a crossing over between high risk groups and low risk groups and the combination of those two things tends to make for higher rates of STDs.”
She also said a disproportionate number of African-American men who are incarcerated and going back and forth from the community to jail, does have an impact, as well as the male to female ratio among African-Americans.
“There’s too few men for the number of women. And what that does is it encourages multiple partners for men—concurrent partners—and those kinds of things are very risky when it comes to sexually transmitted diseases,” Hallfors said.
Jennifer Augustine is the director of the HIV/STI division for Advocates for Youth, a Washington-based organization that according to its Web site, “champions efforts to help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their reproductive and sexual health.”
She said she’s encouraged by the fact that young, Black people as individuals are engaging in less risky sexual behavior, but they have to take it one step further.
“They also (need to) go that next step of talking and communicating with their partner to asses what’s their past sexual history. Who have they engaged in sexual activity with? Have they always used a condom or other means of protection when having sex? Have they practiced unsafe sex?”
She said having these kinds of discussions prior to sexual activity can also improve the sad statistics.
“It really goes to show that while you can do things as an individual to protect your own behavior, you really need to know what is going on with your partner as well and kind of what’s going on in the community.”
While Augustine applauds young Blacks for engaging in less risky behavior, Logan says it still doesn’t comfort her.
“We’re still at risk,” she said. “It just makes me think gosh, how great is STDs and AIDS in our community that even when you’re not doing it you’ll still get infected? So it doesn’t make me feel that much better, it just makes me more aware of how sexually active we are as a whole.”
Both Kates and Hallfors agree that there is a need for a massive campaign to get people in the Black community tested.
Kates said the Kaiser Family Foundation has done a number of media campaigns with Black Entertainment Television over the years to reach out to this vulnerable group.
Hallfors said providing universal and free testing to the people who need it most at the most accessible locations like local churches, beauty salons and barber shops, was among the list of recommendations to policymakers.
She had another recommendation, this time to young, Black people:
“If you’re an African-American, and if you’re at all sexually active, you should not think ‘Hey my behavior is very conventional, I go to church every Sunday, I don’t have lots of partners, I don’t do drugs or drink alcohol.’ That doesn’t mean you’re safe. Because if you’ve ever had sex with somebody… the rates are higher.”