Associated Press - Sunday, October 4, 1998
Alexis Chiu, Associated Press Writer

A new program is hoping to add another item to the list: HIV.

Young women - particularly minorities and those from low-income families - are being infected with the deadly disease at higher rates than ever, many from unprotected heterosexual sex.

That's why Girls in Charge, which focuses on everything from self-esteem to sexual decision making, has a target audience of girls ages 13 to 16.

"When girls have unprotected sex, they're more worried about getting pregnant than about getting HIV," said Tricia Murray, 19, who helped run a Girls in Charge seminar in the city's South Boston section this summer. "They still don't see it as something that teen-agers like them can't get."

The 10-session program, to be expanded this month to include two more Boston communities, Allston-Brighton and East Boston, was inspired by the growing numbers of girls contracting the disease and the lack of prevention efforts focused exclusively on females.

"Most of the programs out there were invented to address other populations like adults, homosexual males, IV drug users," said Girls in Charge coordinator Judah-Abijah Dorrington.

Teen-age girls face unique challenges, including peer pressure and, sometimes, naivete about such issues as buying contraceptives, she said. Waiting until the girls are older to teach them about HIV prevention just doesn't make sense, she said.

"More cases are being revealed of women who became infected as teen-agers or younger," Dorrington said. "You need to start dealing with these things before they start having sex."

Girls in Charge seminars - funded by Boston's Public Health Commission and the Boston Foundation - include such activities as role-playing, question-and-answer sessions and discussions about personal experiences. Though all teen-age girls are welcome at the sessions, the program focuses on lower-income minorities.

Statistics show that disadvantaged women, especially blacks, are being infected with HIV at younger ages and at higher rates than their male counterparts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Between 1990 and 1995, AIDS cases increased 103 percent for women, and just 27 percent for men, according to a CDC study. Last year, females accounted for 49 percent of AIDS cases reported among people ages 13 to 19, she said.

"It suggests younger women are now as apt to acquire HIV as young men," said Dr. Cynthia Gomez, an assistant professor at the Center for AIDS Prevention Center at the University of California at San Francisco. "That's a major shift in the trend."

Of roughly 350,000 people ages 16 to 21 tested in a CDC study between 1990 and 1996, about two out of 1,000 were HIV positive, with rates among black women exceeding 5 per 1,000, according to a report published last month. The CDC also reports a sharp increase since 1991 in women infected through heterosexual sex.

Only 25 states report HIV cases, although all states must report AIDS diagnoses. Based on HIV prevalence estimates, there are a minimum of 60,000 to 115,000 HIV-positive women in the country who haven't yet been diagnosed with AIDS.

"(Young women) really are being viewed as the population with the largest number of new infections," Gomez said. "They don't realize they're at risk, partly because we've so much emphasized certain groups, rather than behaviors. And HIV doesn't discriminate."

Girls in Charge head Dorrington said while her teen-age participants often come to the program knowing some medical facts about HIV and AIDS transmission, they often don't know how to translate that knowledge into action.

"Any girl who doesn't have this information is at risk," she said.
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