black women and stds :: essays research papers

scorch WOMEN AND STDSMany African-American women who live in rural areas do non perceive themselves as being at great risk for undertake HIV,new study results suggest. Consequently, these women may engage in more sexually perilous behaviors than their urban and suburban counterparts, researchers survey.           "Much more work with low-income rural women of food colour needs to be conducted regarding HIV prevention needs and how best to respond to those needs," lead study author Dr. Richard A. Crosby of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, told Reuters Health. "This is an important population of women who can clearly benefit from change magnitude HIV prevention efforts." Crosby and his team surveyed 571 low-income African-American Missouri residents. About integrity quarter of the respondents lived in rural counties, while the majority lived in urban or suburban areas. Rural wom en were doubly as likely as urban or suburban women to say that they did not have a preferred way to prevent HIV or sexually communicate diseases (STDs), because they "dont worry about(predicate) HIV or STD," the investigators describe in the April let on of the American Journal of Public Health, journal of the American Public Health.The women who lived in rural areas were also two times more likely to inform never using condoms or not using condoms because they believed that their married person did not have HIV--regardless of whether or not their partner had actually been tested for the virus. And these women were twice as likely to report that their past or current partner had not been tested for HIV. "Because this belief (that their partner did not have HIV) was establish on something other than the partners HIV test, the finding suggests that rural women may be more likely than non-rural women to take their partners word that they are HIV negative," the a uthors write. Rural study participants were about half as likely as their non-rural counterparts to report that they had ever been diagnosed with syphilis or gonorrhea. They were also about twice as likely to report not having received counseling about HIV during their last pregnancy, the report indicates. Overall, however, the reason for the discrepancy in HIV beliefs and prevention practices between urban and rural women may be because "HIV is less salient, as a threat, among rural women," Crosby speculated.