Riley Croghan CORE 116 Spring 2007

The AIDS Epidemic in Washington, DC Paper Two

ANALYSIS

The Big Picture

As I continue growing up and making my way through college, I find myself leaving Washington further and further behind. My mother moved away a year ago, and my father moved across town, to an apartment I’ve been to only twice. A quick bit of math reveals that I’ve spent more time in the Case Library than I’ve spent anywhere I might call “home” in DC.

            It’s amazing what a quick bit of math can reveal. After years of living in the nation’s capitol, I’m learning of the veritable plague that’s been on the city. How could I have been so ignorant of what was happening all around me?

Table One: Cumulative and Living AIDS Cases by Ward, 2003*                                        

   In D.C., my ward (Ward 3) has incredibly low AIDS rates. In fact, Ward 3 stands out in most of the traits that I measured, from average income to crime rates. It is such a peculiar case that I had to drop it in making my correlational analyses, and set out to figure out why it was so different.

 Ignoring that Ward as an outlier for now, [Table One] shows a very grim picture of D.C. The AIDS rates are in the thousands, and that is counting only full-blown, diagnosed AIDS cases. The District leads America in the number of new AIDS cases, and Of all the cities in the US with over 500,000 occupants, D.C. is responsible over 30% of the cases. [9] How has the disease been able to silently cripple an entire city?

Table Three: Percent Black vs. Cumulative AIDS rate

Correlation: .0442
Correlation without Ward 3: .89

    The most successful correlation I discovered on my quest for answers was between skin color and AIDS rates. While there is no direct causal relationship between skin color and transmission of the virus, it is clear that race is a major factor in how the HIV virus is spreading in each ward.

            This was the correlation I was expecting to find. When we did talk about AIDS in high school, it was added on to a discussion about the poor or homeless. And for the last 20 years, it has been increasingly a problem in poor or homeless Wards One and Two, which sport a decent-sized White population, may have the highest cumulative rates per ward, but Wards 4-8, taken together, show what the majority of the D.C. population is facing. White men who have sex with men have not been in the majority of AIDS cases since 1985; in fact, recently the total number of Black females has overwhelmed the rate  of White males [6].

Since skin color can't explain higher transmission rates of AIDS, I looked at some other possible factors I could find about the Wards. None of the ones I could find were statistically significant to p=.05:

Table Six: Public Assistance vs. AIDS*

Correlation: .0789 (Very Weak)
Correlation without Ward 3: .598 (stronger, not quite significant)

Table Seven: Teen Mothers vs. AIDS*

Correlation: .229 (Weak)
Correlation without Ward 3: .65 (Stronger, not quite significant)

Table Eight: Family Income vs. AIDS* 1999

Correlation: .336
Correlation without Ward 3: .55

Despite the absence of immediately strong correlations, these tables show a distinct trend between the wards. 1-3 are much more affluent in addition to being primarily white.

You will no doubt notice that most of these correlations were strengthened by excluding Ward Three. Why is Ward Three such a special case?