My High School and Middle School
My Hometown
My high school is located in Palo Alto, California, in Santa Clara County. Palo Alto has a cumulative AIDS rate of 200/100,000 population, or about 1 in 500 people. In the United States, the average rate is about 328/100,000 population, or about 1 in 300 people. Statistically, there is not much difference between those two numbers, as the US has a much larger population, and therefore less variance. Santa Clara County’s cumulative AIDS rate is approximately in between those of Palo Alto and the US, with a rate of 223/100,000 or approximately 1 in 400 people. (See data table).
Even though the cumulative AIDS rate is low, there are some racial and ethnic disparities in the numbers. Whites make up 56% of the total cumulative AIDS cases in Santa Clara County, but they account for only 47% of the population. They have a cumulative AIDS rate of 281 cases per 100,000 population, as opposed to the national rate of 198. Hispanics make up 24% of the population, but 27% of the AIDS cases. In Santa Clara County, the cumulative AIDS rate is 255, and in the rest of California, it is slightly higher, at 300. Both those rates are lower than the national rate of 440. Blacks and African Americans make up 11% of the cases, even though they make up just 2.7% of the population. The cumulative AIDS rate in Santa Clara County is 935, which is much higher than for Hispanics and whites, but lower than both the state rate of 1173 and the national rate of 1171. By contrast, Asians and Legacy Asians/Pacific Islanders make up just 4% of the cumulative AIDS rates, but 25.87% of the population. The cumulative AIDS rate in Santa Clara County is just 46, lower than the California rate of 91 and the national rate of 76, and significantly lower than the Hispanic, white, and black/African-American rates. Some of the disparity can be explained by immigration—many Asians in Santa Clara County are first generation immigrants, and so when AIDS cases were first being calculated in 1983, they made up a proportionately smaller percentage of the population (approximately 7.9% of the population), whereas the population of whites compared to other races and ethnicities has dropped since 1983, when they made up approximately 79.6% of the population[1]. Still, there are disparities in the African American/Black population and Asian population and AIDS rates as compared to the white and Hispanic AIDS rates.
