AIDS CORRELATION IN CHICAGO

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INTRO

In the first assignment, my exposure to the AIDS epidemic in Chicago indicated that cumulative AIDS rates were most heavily diagnosed in areas that are either predominately gay, poor, or black. Chicago’s neighborhoods tend to be grouped by similar demographic traits; there are poverty stricken west and south sides and more affluent neighborhoods along Lake Michigan shore (1).

For decades, Chicago’s high-rise projects, clustered in inner-city ghettos, symbolized public housings worst failures (2). As was the intent of Chicago urban planners, these housing projects were deliberately sited in racially segregated communities on the south and west sides and cut off from the rest of the city by major expressways (3). The tenants of these decaying developments are and continue to be mired in extremely low-income, impoverished, and blighted neighborhoods. Since 1996, the Chicago Housing Authority has torn down much of its high-rise public housing (4)- part of a plan to build new, mixed income housing. Thus far, however, tearing down many of the high-rise public housing units has simply replicated the racial and economic isolation and segregation of the past (5): the majority of relocated families are not only ending up in areas that are racially segregated with high levels of poverty, but facing a real possibility of losing their housing assistance and even becoming homeless (6). In an attempt to determine whether these variables are associated with the spread of HIV/AIDS epidemic, I made several correlational analyses of AIDS rates (MAP A) in different areas in Chicago. Assuming a 95 % confidence interval, any correlational coefficient over .235 will be viewed as significant (p< .05, n=70). Four main divisions should be considered when investigating the correlations between AIDS rates in the neighborhoods of Chicago. These categories include race, economic status, unemployment, and education.

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