ABSTRACT
More and more African Americans are being taken from their communities trapped in the clutches of the HIV disease. We are losing our sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, and partners at an alarming rate (McKenzie, 1991, p. 125). Current statistics indicate that the number of HIV/AIDS cases continues to rise steadily, with no plateau in sight, and women are increasingly being diagnosed with the disease. In 1994, 14,081 of the reported AIDS cases occurred in women—nearly three times greater than the proportion since 1985. The median age of women who reported with AIDS was thirty-five years, and women ages fifteen to forty-four years accounted for 84 percent of cases, three times as many women as were reported in 1985 (CDC, 1995). AIDS is the number one cause of death in women ages twenty-five to forty-four in fifteen major U.S. cities and the fourth leading cause of death for women in this age range in the United States as a whole (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, 1995). In 1992, for the first time, diagnosed cases attributed to heterosexual contact exceeded those attributed to injection drug use (O'Leary and Jemmott, 1995).
