Black Teens Are Getting The Message On HIV, But Risks Are Still There : Shots - Health Blog : NPR: The HIV epidemic among African-Americans is getting deserved new attention at the 19th International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. And the news isn't all bad.
New data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that black high school students are engaging in risky sexual behavior far less often than they were 20 years ago.
Since black teens are the future of the epidemic for the hardest-hit ethnic group, this is encouraging.
Here are the main results:
The percentage of black high-schoolers who've ever had sex has declined since 1991, from 82 percent to 60 percent.
There's been a big drop in black teens who've had multiple sex partners. In 1991, 43 percent had. Now it's 25 percent, or about half.
The risky-sex gap between white and black high schoolers has been narrowed. (Hispanic teens are between the two in riskiness, and their risk hasn't changed.)
