Study: Metro Atlanta’s HIV epidemic centered around downtown

Metro Atlanta’s HIV cases are concentrated mainly in the downtown Atlanta area, according to a study released last week by Emory University.

The Emory Center for AIDS Research says that 60 percent of people living with HIV in Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett Counties are clustered in 157 census tracts centered around downtown Atlanta. According to the study, 1.34 percent of people who reside in the highest risk areas of that cluster are living with HIV. Since the World Health Organization classifies HIV rates higher than 1 percent as a “generalized epidemic,” Atlanta easily qualifies.

And Georgia’s rank of 9th in the nation for new HIV infections indicates that this epidemic isn’t going away anytime soon. Emory researchers note that HIV service providers — 42 percent of the metro region’s are located in the identified cluster — could facilitate treatment and prevention.

“Prevention efforts targeted to the populations living in this identified area, as well as efforts to address their specific needs, may be most beneficial in curtailing the epidemic within this cluster,” Paula Frew, an Emory School of Medicine professor and author of the study, said in a statement.

So why is sexual health in downtown Atlanta faring so poorly?