Another staff member at PSI noted that most of the patients are Latino or African American, which she said "reflected the face of the AIDS epidemic." I thought that this was an interesting comment, and it made me curious to see just how true this was. I checked out the statistics on the website for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv, my source for all statistics in this blog post). Then I calculated the racial makeup of PSI. Interestingly, the demographics of PSI did not reflect the racial/ethnic breakdown of the prevalence of HIV in this country. As you can see from the charts below, there are disproportionately more Black and Hispanic/Latino people living at PSI than there are living with HIV in the United States. Additionally, there are very few white people at PSI, while they make up over one-third of people with HIV in this country.
 |
| Why doesn't the racial makeup of PSI match that of the HIV/AIDS epidemic? |
Not only are people of color disproportionately affected by HIV (Blacks/African-Americans and Hispanics/Latinos make up 12% and 15% of the US population, respectively), but they are also disproportionately represented at PSI. Why should this be? Is it that there are relatively more people of color living in New York City? Is it that whites are less likely to enroll in treatment programs? I truly do not know the answer to this question, but I plan on informally surveying the people I work with, who I'm sure have greater insight than I do. I'll publish an update to this post afterwards. In the meantime, readers, what are your thoughts?
Update 7/21/10: After talking to my co-workers and doing a little internet research, I may have found a partial explanation. Shockingly, 97% of people who are incarcerated in New York City are Black or Hispanic (http://www.nyclu.org/content/state-of-drug-policy-and-addiction-new-york-city-and-reform-of-rockefeller-drug-laws). Keep in mind that the majority of people admitted to PSI have come from prison and are mandated here by a judge. So, that is likely a major contributor to the racial breakdown of PSI.
1.) Perhaps looking at US statistics is too broad. I would not be surprised if the overall % of white people in NYC is lower than it is in the overall US, thus requiring more analysis to make a fair comparison. Perhaps NYC statistics would be more germane, assuming they are available.
ReplyDeleteIf you did the same analysis about Holy Cross, you know there would be a big problem because of the huge bias from the average present in the makeup of the HC population. Same with NYC, potentially.
2.) I would also offer incredible skepticism about any social statistic. I personally find it necessary to examine the means by which any social statistic was gathered. I find too many examples in which the manner in which a statistic was derived has questionable logic. The two most common issues being bias of the person measuring the social statistic and, separately, a person using a crude means of measurement (ie, it's not enough of a sample because the sample costs too much money to take, or the system is too complicated and requires severe assumptions to arrive at conclusions).
3.) I would be curious to look at the poverty distribution. What is the relationship between average household income and HIV prevalence? Then compare that to racial average household incomes. To what extent might it be financially-biased, such that the financial demographics of NYC might be the most relevant variable?
Dancing_Scientist, you are right. Looking at NYC statistics paints a much clearer picture of what's going on. See my update above.
ReplyDelete