Charlotte Observer | 02/12/2004 | HIV up steeply in black college men
HIV up steeply in black college men
Researcher: Study in N.C. reveals `public health emergency’
KAREN GARLOCH
Staff Writer
HIV infection among black male college students in North Carolina has risen so fast in three years that state health officials say the epidemic threatens the “leaders of tomorrow.”
“We’re talking about the future leaders for the black community being devastated by this,” said Dr. Peter Leone, a UNC Chapel Hill researcher and director of the N.C. sexually transmitted disease program.
“This is really a shot across the bow to all young black men. We have to address this thing.”
Researchers say the N.C. epidemic has spread to five other Southeastern states and threatens female college students who have sex with bisexual or gay men.
Since 2000, at least 84 N.C. college men — including 73 blacks — have been diagnosed with HIV, according to research presented by Leone this week at an HIV conference in San Francisco.
That is more than 20 percent of all young N.C. men with HIV, Leone said. And it’s an increase from 5 percent in 2000.
“This is a public health emergency,” Leone said. “It’s not just an increase overall in young men. College students are representing more of the total burden of the disease in 18- to 30-year-olds.”
The HIV-infected students were enrolled in 37 N.C. colleges and universities from Charlotte to Wilmington. But the study also identified HIV-infected students at seven schools in five other states who were linked to the N.C. outbreak.
Leone would not name the colleges involved, but said most schools in the state were included in the investigation.
“It really isn’t one school or one group of schools,” he said. “We really think this is something that goes beyond North Carolina and involves the southeastern United States.”
The epidemic also threatens female college students, who were not studied.
In interviews with public health officials, 60 percent of the HIV-infected male college students said they had sex with other men; 40 percent reported having sex with men and women. Most said they did not consider themselves at high risk for contracting HIV.
“They were not protecting themselves, and they were not protecting others from becoming infected,” said Judy Owens-O’Dowd, an official in the state sexually transmitted disease program.
No one is accusing anyone of intentionally infecting other people, Leone said.
“The sexual behavior (of black college men) is not any different than what we see for other groups of young adults,” he said. “The network is relatively small for black men who have sex with men. … What we have is HIV entering into a small sexual network that can quickly take off.”
In interviews with infected students, researchers found that 61 of the 84 college men were connected through a sexual network that covered 21 of the 37 N.C. schools.
The study, done by researchers at UNC Chapel Hill and the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, started in November 2002 when a new surveillance program, using a test that could identify HIV infection early, found two men who became infected while attending different colleges in Raleigh.
The investigation eventually went statewide, covering 69 N.C. counties, mostly east of Charlotte.
The number of newly diagnosed HIV cases in college men increased dramatically, Leone said, from six in 2000, 19 in 2001 and 29 in 2002 to 30 in 2003.
In the same years, 651 HIV cases were detected in men of the same age who were not enrolled in college.
Slides used in Leone’s presentation show several schools had extremely high rates of HIV among black men. One school’s rate was about five times greater than the state’s overall rate of 117 HIV infections per 100,000 black men ages 18 to 30.
Leone said the state needs financial help to provide more free HIV testing on campuses, to train peer counselors and to educate people about behavioral risks.
“We know everything we need to do to prevent transmission right now,” Leone said. “We obviously haven’t figured out an effective way of delivering an education message.”
On one campus, people were afraid to get tested because HIV tests were offered at one time only, and to go would mean they could be stigmatized as infected or homosexual. Testing needs to be incorporated into routine student health care, Leone said.
If changes aren’t made, the epidemic will only spread, he said.
“We do know that college students do have sex with noncollege students. They graduate and leave school. It’s just a matter of time. … We really need to get black students in on this. Apathy isn’t going to cut it.”
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Reach Karen Garloch at (704) 358-5078 or kgarloch@charlotteobserver.com.