HBCUs Step Up to the HIV Challenge: Nearly three decades after HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was discovered, health and medical researchers know at least half of all new infections are in people under age 25. Still, the nation's estimated 17 million college students have not been considered by health care providers to be a high-risk group for contracting HIV/AIDS, says Craig Roberts, an epidemiologist who chairs the American College Health Association's Sexual Health Education and Clinical Care Coalition.
But not all HIV/AIDS risk is equal, points out Dr. Peter Leone who five years ago uncovered an outbreak of HIV among 84 young men on nearly 40 North Carolina university campuses. That disturbing upsurge of HIV infections was driven by college-aged Black men aged 17-27 who have sex with men , said Leone, the incoming chairman of the National Coalition of STD Directors and an associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill School of Medicine. The rate of infection among that population signaled 'a public health emergency' for Leone and others on the frontline of the epidemic that isn't showing signs of abating.
