Also, the October 2000 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine includes background papers commissioned as part of the IOM study. The committee was chaired by Bernard Guyer, chair, department of population and family health sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore. The study was funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recent reports indicate that a false sense of security and growing complacency brought on by treatment advances may be contributing to a resurgence of risky behaviors in some areas. Additionally, a shift in which populations are living with AIDS suggests that prevention efforts may not be effectively reaching those at risk.
Tracking is key.
In the past 15 years, the number of new AIDS cases among minorities, women, and adolescents has increased considerably. For example, African Americans and Hispanics now account for nearly 66 percent of all new AIDS cases, a twofold increase in that period. During the same time frame, the number of new AIDS cases among men who have sex with men declined by nearly half, from 65 percent to 34 percent although recent reports suggest that in some areas, infection rates are increasing among this group. But all of these statistics are based on documented AIDS cases. And because it can take 10 years without treatment and more than 10 with treatment for HIV infection to develop into AIDS, these figures are only able to show where the epidemic has been and not necessarily where it is going.