Essex County Data & Statistics

The question of why Essex County has so many AIDS can be answered by addressing three factors: geographic location, socioeconomic status, and racial composition.  When the epidemic began in the 1980s, New York City was the epicenter in which the deadly virus first took root and from which it began to spiral across the country.  Essex County’s location has been a contributing factor in its experience with the epidemic. Some high-risk groups for HIV/AIDS, as defined by the government, include minorities, especially African Americans and Hispanics, Intravenous Drug Users, and the impoverished.  The socioeconomic and racial composition of Essex County lends itself to a potentially horrific magnitude of AIDS cases.

Original proximity to the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic was a big factor in the prevalence of the disease in Northern New Jersey counties.  However, now, the high levels of poverty and minority population are contributing factors to the spread of HIV. According to the 2000 United States Census, the average worker in Essex County needs to travel 30.3 minutes to work (Table 4). Newark, the easternmost municipality in Essex, is 13 miles from New York City. Jersey City, in Hudson County, lies 7 miles west of NYC. In Hudson County, the average worker travels 31.2 minutes to work.  Passaic County is home to Paterson, an impoverished and AIDS-stricken city that is 17 miles from NYC; the average Passaic County worker travels 25.5 minutes to work. The distances and travel times are indicative of the accessibility of the city to those living in the counties adjacent to the island. Many workers in New Jersey are New York City commuters.  Time spent working, and presumably socializing and receiving medical treatment, in the city open up possibility for HIV contraction through male-to-male sexual relations, blood transfusions, intravenous drug use, and heterosexual relations.       

Because of the number of premier research hospitals in the city, it is likely that patients seeking operations or hemophiliacs seeking treatment may have seen doctors in the city, and thereby received contaminated transfusions before an AIDS test was developed. 10% of HIV/AIDS cases in Essex County as of June 30, 2006 did not have a reported transmission category or were classified as “other”, which includes blood transfusion and perinatal transmission. When AIDS was first linked to blood transfusions in the mid-1980s, over 60% of the associated cases were found in New York, New Jersey, California, and Florida, the states with the reported most cases at that time.⁶

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that HIV/AIDS is a health crisis for minorities and is especially prevalent among African Americans. In the United States, African Americans make up approximately 13% of the population.  However, in 2005, African Americans accounted for 49% of the new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in the country, a percentage that is disproportionately larger than the proportionate “share.”¹⁶ Since the beginning of the epidemic, African Americans have accounted for 42% of the total AIDS cases diagnosed in the U.S.  The CDC accounts for the high rate of HIV/AIDS in African Americans with their associated trend of poverty, a statistic that has been linked as a major factor in risk of HIV contraction.  The CDC has reported that it is proven that socioeconomic issues and other influences affect the rate of HIV infection:  “In 1999, nearly 1 in 4 African Americans were living in poverty. Studies have found an association between high AIDS incidence and lower income.”¹⁵ When comparing the statistics for racial composition in Essex towns versus the national average, the same trends are seen as during the socioeconomic status comparisons (Table 5).  In Newark, just over half of the population is African American and under ¼ of the population is white; there is also a high percentage of people with Hispanic or Latino heritage, 32.9%. In Irvington, over 85% of the population is African American and 7% of the population is white.  Taking a look at cities with less cumulative cases, Bloomfield is 11.7% African American and 70.1% white. As before, the statistics for towns in which there are less than 50 cumulative cases further prove the trend; in Essex Fells, the population is 0.5% African American and 96.9% white. Overall, the statistics for number of cases by race in Essex County show that 80% of cases are in African Americans, 12% are in Hispanics, and 7% are in whites (Table 7).  When considering the county versus national rates, it is clear that in Essex County even more so than in the U.S., AIDS is largely a health risk for minorities, with a significant skew towards African Americans. The percentage of cases by race statistics show that Essex County numbers have significantly more African American cases and significantly less white cases.