HIV/AIDS among African Americans and US women: minority and young women.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic continues to be a major health crisis facing the African American community. Although African Americans make up only about twelve percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for half of the new HIV infections reported in the United States in 2001. Numerous studies suggest that many new infections occur among young African Americans. In the early 1980s, HIV/AIDS was considered mostly a gay white male disease in the United States. Today, the pandemic has expanded and the disease is also a major health problem in the African American community, where men and women of every age and sexual orientation are affected.