Aids in Us

PROBLEM DEVELOPMENT

For over thirty years HIV and AIDS have presented historic challenges to the human nature, especially to our planet’s public health, scientific and medical communities. It is estimated that just in the United States between 900.000 and 950.000 persons are living with HIV and about one forth of those infected have not yet been diagnosed and are unaware of their infection. The number of people with AIDS is increasing as effective new drug therapies keep HIV-infected persons healthy longer and dramatically reduce the death rates. However in spite of extremely beneficial advances in the field of HIV-AIDS treatment in recent years the epidemic is far from being over. The Center for Disease Control in the United States has estimated that about 40.000 people become infected every year and most of these are young persons under the age of 25. The epidemic of HIV is severely impacting the communities of color, particularly young men and women. Roughly about sixty percent of new infections continue to be among men having a sexual intercourse with another man. The National HIV Prevention Committee suggests that there has been resurgence in unsafe behaviors among some communities of gay men. With all the research and evidence available from various government and non-profit organizations dealing with HIV and AIDS prevention far too many Americans believe that the epidemic is over in the United States. Among minorities, women, and the poor the worst may yet to be come. African Americans represent 12 percent of the American population, which is about 35.000.000 people, but about 50 percent of the new HIV cases (www.statehealthfacts.org). In the United States some 80 percent of all women infected are women of color. In addition African-American women are becoming infected at younger age compared to their white peers primarily through heterosexual contact. Hispanics present about 14 percent of the US population, about 40.322.930 people, and 20 percent of HIV-AIDS cases. The HIV infection rate among Native Americans is approximately one and a half time that of whites and they die from AIDS much faster than the whites due to late diagnosis.

I share the opinion that the higher rate of HIV infection in the world stems in part from failure of personal responsibility and inattention to warnings from HIV/AIDS advocates, physicians and community organizations. However there are other elements that play an imperative role in the devastation that HIV/AIDS is causing in poor and minority communities according to the article “America’s Epidemic” by Gloria Browne Marshal. She implies that lack of insurance, inadequate medical attention; general poor health and a criminal justice system in which people of color are disproportionately incarcerated contribute directly to increased infection rates among these vulnerable populations. According to her article America’s incarcerated population is about 2.1 million, the highest incarceration rate in the world, of which 65 percent are people of color thus increasing the like hood of contracting HIV in the prison. The culture of violence that contributes poor health, rape and unprotected sex is a characteristic of the correctional facilities throughout the world. And even in the face of HIV infection most of the correctional facilities refuse to distribute condoms since sex is illegal among inmates. Inmates are usually being tested for HIV upon their arrival to the facility and the chances are not minimal that they could leave with an infection without being retested thus putting their future partners (and their future partners) at risk.

To address the problem of HIV/AIDS it is necessary to understand the context of the problem. It is also relevant to identify the dependent and independent variables along with control variables (if any).

Problem: Develop successful HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention programs to reduce the increasing rate of HIV infections in the United States.

Dependent variable: Increasing rate of HIV infections in the United States.

Independent variable: Successful HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention programs.

Control Variable: Sufficient funding from the government.

Values for the dependent variable: Actual numbers showing the rate of increase.

Values for the independent variable: High, low…volumes of simplicity and accessibility.

Values for the control variable: Actual dollar amount.

In my opinion the levels of measurements for these variables are ordinal because they can rank the issue and compare the accomplished long and short term results. An organized cross sectional descriptive design should include the following