ABSTRACT
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), like most epidemics, is not best understood as a single outburst of infection or disease affecting an entire population or region with equal force. Because the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a blood-borne, sexual, and perinatally transmitted infection—one based on patterns of intimate contact—AIDS spreads at different rates through different communities and the distinct subpopulations that inhabit them. The geographic concentration of different populations with high rates of HIV infection has several important implications for the spread of the infection. Social networks, in which both drug use and sexual contact most frequently occur, are predicated on these demographic features: race/ethnicity, age group, and neighborhood. Although the most noticeable initial effect of high levels of HIV infection in the population of urban minority communities may be a sharp rise in the incidence of new infections within these specific neighborhoods, the situation is not static.
