Community poverty and trends in racial/ethnic survival disparities among people diagnosed with AIDS in Florida, 1993-2004.

OBJECTIVES

We described the racial/ethnic disparities in survival among people diagnosed with AIDS in Florida from 1993 to 2004, as the availability of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) became widespread. We determined whether these disparities decreased after controlling for measures of community-level socioeconomic status.

METHODS

We compared survival from all causes between non-Hispanic Blacks and non-Hispanic Whites vis-a-vis survival curves and Cox proportional hazards models controlling for demographic, clinical, and area-level poverty factors.

RESULTS

Racial/ethnic disparities in survival peaked for those diagnosed during the early implementation of HAART (1996-1998) with a Black-to-White hazard ratio (HR) of 1.72 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.62, 1.83) for males and 1.40 (95% CI = 1.24, 1.59) for females. These HRs declined significantly to 1.48 (95% CI = 1.35, 1.64) for males and nonsignificantly to 1.25 (95% CI = 1.05, 1.48) for females in the 2002 to 2004 diagnosis cohort. Disparities decreased significantly for males but not females when controlling for baseline demographic factors and CD4 count and percentage, and became nonsignificant in the 2002 to 2004 cohort after controlling for area poverty.

CONCLUSIONS

Area poverty appears to play a role in racial/ethnic disparities even after controlling for demographic factors and CD4 count and percentage.