The Associated Press; Thursday August 27, 1998
Russ Bynum, Associated Press Writer

The finding arises from a seven-year study that looked at HIV tests for 350,000 youths in the federal Jobs Corps program, which provides job training to poor youths and high school dropouts.

Researchers found that the rate of infection among women ages 16 to 21 was 50 percent higher than that of men in the same group.

The highest rates of infection were among black women, with five out of every 1,000 infected with HIV.

"We are continuing to see that the face of the epidemic is changing to populations that are more economically disadvantaged or among racial and ethnic minorities and difficult to reach populations," said George Lemp, director of the AIDS research program for the University of California.

In the one bit of good news, the study reported that the overall rate of infection among all the youths declined from 1990 to 1996, the period during which the study was conducted.

Researchers suggested the difference between the sexes was because young women are more likely to have sex with older partners, who are more likely to have HIV than younger men.

As the study showed, women aged 16 to 18 were being infected at more than twice the rate of men the same age - 2.4 per 1,000 compared to 1.1 per 1,000 - while infection rates for men and women ages 19 to 21 were roughly equal.

Experts said the data, to be published in the September issue of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes and Human Retrovirology, shows that traditional HIV-prevention programs are not enough to prevent the spread of the virus among the poor.

"We've go to be creative in getting to them," said Linda Valleroy, a CDC epidemiologist and author of the study.

"They're not in school - high school phys-ed teachers are not going to reach them," she said. "They're not employed - AIDS training in the workplace is not going to reach them."

Race also was a factor in the infection rate.

Only among blacks did women have higher infection rates than men, whose rate was 3.2 per 1,000. Rates were nearly the same for white men and women, .8 per 1,000 and .7 per 1,000 respectively. Among Hispanics, the infection rate among men was more than twice that of women, 1.5 per 1,000 compared with .6 per 1,000.

Overall, two of every 1,000 youths studied tested positive for HIV. The infection rate among all women studied was 3 per 1,000, 50 percent higher than that for all men studied - 2 per 1,000.

The Job Corps infection rates were twice as high as those reported by adolescent health clinics and eight times higher than rates for youths applying for military service.

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