The impact of HIV/AIDS on the African American woman and child: epidemiology, cultural and psychosocial issues and nursing management.
The approach to understanding the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) must include the African American woman and children as persons at high risk. This information must be documented in all epidemiology, cultural and psychosocial aspects of care, and nursing management reports. Approximately twenty years after it was first recognized, AIDS is still traveling across the globe at full speed, with very little brake power. In the United States, the African American heterosexual woman continues to be the fastest growing group of persons with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. The proportion of cases increased drastically in the period from 1993 to October 1995, with women totaling 18 percent of the total cases (Newman & Wofsy, 1997). The impact that cultural and psychological issues have had on women and children living with HIV or AIDS is immense, involving not only the potential burdens of physical deterioration, but also the stress of accompanying lifestyle and role changes. These issues involve processes in adjusting and adapting to HIV infection that are important not only because of their centrality to the coping individual, but because they directly affect the success of treatment and prevention (Jaccard, Wilson & Radecki, 1995).
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Division of Nursing, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA.
D015492:AIDS Serodiagnosis; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American; D002648:Child; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000451:nursing / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D018445:Infectious Disease Transmission, Vertical / Q000517:prevention & control; D011247:Pregnancy; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014481:United States