Thirty years after AIDS was first recognized, the American South
constitutes the epicenter of the United States' epidemic. Southern
states claim the highest rates of new infections, the most
AIDS-related deaths, and the largest number of adults and
adolescents living with the virus. Moreover, the epidemic
disproportionately affects African American communities across the
region. Using the history of HIV in North Carolina as a case study,
Stephen Inrig examines the rise of AIDS in the South in the period
from the early spread and discovery of the disease through the late
nineties.
Drawing on epidemiological, archival, and oral history sources,
Inrig probes the social determinants of health that put poor,
rural, and minority communities at greater risk of HIV infection in
the American South. He also examines the difficulties that health
workers and AIDS organizations faced in reaching those communities,
especially in the early years of the epidemic. His analysis
provides an important counterweight to most accounts of the early
history of the disease, which focus on urban areas and the spread
of AIDS in the gay community. As one of the first historical
studies of AIDS in a southern state,
North Carolina and the
Problem of AIDS provides powerful insight into the forces and
factors that have made AIDS such an intractable health problem in
the American South and the greater United States.