By Alabama Public Radio
Tuscaloosa, AL – Health researchers have been struggling for years to understand why African-Americans in the rural South contract AIDS at a faster rate than whites ... now a researcher at the University of Alabama says she may have the answer.
Researcher Bronwen Lichtenstein has been conducting hundreds of interviews across the Black Belt region over the last decade. She says the higher rate of AIDS among rural blacks is due to a dangerous mix of bisexuality, abuse of women and drugs. She says those three factors are compounded by the fact that many rural blacks live in poverty.
Not all researchers agree with Lichtenstein's findings, but many say they're seeing some of the same things.
Only one in four Alabamians are black. But about 60 percent of the people in Alabama who have AIDS are blacks. Most of them are males.