enhanced_deficit
05-31-2015, 02:57 PM
Welcome to the Red State HIV Epidemic
Republican governors face tough decisions as the disease spreads in middle America.
By ADAM WREN
May 28, 2015
It wasn’t supposed to happen here. Not in Austin, a one-doctor-and-an-ice-cream-shop town of 4,200 in southeastern Indiana, nestled off Interstate 65 on the road from Indianapolis to Louisville, where dusty storefronts sit vacant and many residents, lacking cars, walk to the local market. Not in rural, impoverished Scott County, which had reported fewer than five new cases of HIV infection each year, and just three cases in the past six years. Not in a state where, of the 500 new cases reported annually, only 3 percent are linked to injection drug use.
But it did. And it could happen in many more backwoods towns just as unprepared as Austin.
As the largest HIV/AIDS outbreak in Indiana’s history roils this Hoosier hamlet, it reflects the changing face of the epidemic in the U.S., as a disease that once primarily afflicted gays and minorities in deep-blue cities rises in rural red states. This new evolution of HIV is also forcing a new generation of Republican policymakers to confront its orthodox opposition to remedies such as government-funded needle-exchange programs.
Over the past decade, the virus cascaded from urban cities like San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., into poor, rural swaths of red states in middle America—opening a new front in the national fight against the spread of HIV. “It started in the coastal states among middle-class white gay men, and then the epidemic evolved into affecting more and more minorities in the South,” says Carlos del Rio, an AIDS researcher at Emory University in Atlanta. “Obviously, now the epidemic is changed. Now, what we're seeing is it impacting the rural communities.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/red-state-hiv-epidemic-drug-use-republican-governors-118379.html (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/red-state-hiv-epidemic-drug-use-republican-governors-118379.html#ixzz3bkdwwY5L)
Related
Obama tabs HIV-positive activist for AIDS czar
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/24/obama-tabs-hiv-positive-activist-aids-czar/
Michigan Republican Committeeman: Gay Couples Want Health Care Because They Die Early Of AIDS
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/12/10/3042771/michigan-republican-committeeman-gay-couples-want-health-benefits-die-early-aids/
Republican governors face tough decisions as the disease spreads in middle America.
By ADAM WREN
May 28, 2015
It wasn’t supposed to happen here. Not in Austin, a one-doctor-and-an-ice-cream-shop town of 4,200 in southeastern Indiana, nestled off Interstate 65 on the road from Indianapolis to Louisville, where dusty storefronts sit vacant and many residents, lacking cars, walk to the local market. Not in rural, impoverished Scott County, which had reported fewer than five new cases of HIV infection each year, and just three cases in the past six years. Not in a state where, of the 500 new cases reported annually, only 3 percent are linked to injection drug use.
But it did. And it could happen in many more backwoods towns just as unprepared as Austin.
As the largest HIV/AIDS outbreak in Indiana’s history roils this Hoosier hamlet, it reflects the changing face of the epidemic in the U.S., as a disease that once primarily afflicted gays and minorities in deep-blue cities rises in rural red states. This new evolution of HIV is also forcing a new generation of Republican policymakers to confront its orthodox opposition to remedies such as government-funded needle-exchange programs.
Over the past decade, the virus cascaded from urban cities like San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., into poor, rural swaths of red states in middle America—opening a new front in the national fight against the spread of HIV. “It started in the coastal states among middle-class white gay men, and then the epidemic evolved into affecting more and more minorities in the South,” says Carlos del Rio, an AIDS researcher at Emory University in Atlanta. “Obviously, now the epidemic is changed. Now, what we're seeing is it impacting the rural communities.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/red-state-hiv-epidemic-drug-use-republican-governors-118379.html (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/red-state-hiv-epidemic-drug-use-republican-governors-118379.html#ixzz3bkdwwY5L)
Related
Obama tabs HIV-positive activist for AIDS czar
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/24/obama-tabs-hiv-positive-activist-aids-czar/
Michigan Republican Committeeman: Gay Couples Want Health Care Because They Die Early Of AIDS
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/12/10/3042771/michigan-republican-committeeman-gay-couples-want-health-benefits-die-early-aids/