This document includes the table of contents and abstracts
of selected articles from the November 2005 issue (Supplement B)
of the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved
and excerpted by the Alliance for Health Reform
Journal of Health Care
for the Poor and Underserved
Volume 16, Number 4 Supplement B ♦ November 2005
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Reducing HIV/AIDS and Criminal Justice Involvement in African Americans
as a Consequence of Drug Abuse
Introduction
Lula Beatty, Dionne Jones, LeKhessa Doctor
Heroes and Great Ideas
Beny J. Primm, MD: Pioneer Physician, Educator, and Advocate for People with
Addictions and HIV/AIDS
Annelle B. Pimm, Lawrence S. Brown rt . .
Part 1: HIV/AIDS, Drug Abuse and Prevention
HIV-Positive Black Women with Histories of Childhood Sexual Abuse: Patterns of
Substance Use and Barriers to Health Care
Gail Wyatt, Jennifer Vargas Carmona, Tamra Burns Loeb, John K. Williams
Disseminating HIV/AIDS Information to African Americans
Carolyn A. Sroman
What’s Culture Got to Do with It? Prevention Programs for African American
Adolescent Girls
Maya A Corneille, Amie M. Ashcroft, Faye Z. Belgrave
Part 2: The Criminal Justice System and Drug Abuse
How Criminal System Racial Disparities May Translate into Health Disparities
Martin Y. Iguchi, James Bell, Rajeev N. Ramchand, Terry Fain
Racial Disparity and the Legitimacy of the Criminal Justice System: Exploring
Consequences for Deterrence
Faye Taxman, James M Byrne, April Pattavina
The Building Resiliency and Vocational Excellence (BRAVE) Program: A
Violence-Prevention and Role Model Program for Young, African American
Males
James P Griffin . , ,
Part 3: The Intersection of HIV/AIDS and the Criminal Justice System
African American Female Drug Users and HIV Risk Reduction: Challenges with
Criminal Involvement
Claire Sterk Katherine Theall, Kirk Elifson
HIV Risk Behaviors, Knowledge, and Prevention Service Experiences Among
African American and Other Offenders
Steven Belenko Michele Shedlin, Michael Chaple
Short-term Impact of an HIV Risk Reduction Intervention for Soon-To-Be
Released Inmates
Ronald Braithwaite, Torrance T. Stephens, Henrie Treadwell, Kisha Braithwaite, Rhonda
Conerly
Black-White Disparities in HIV/AIDS: The Role of Drug Policy and the
Corrections System
Kim M. Blankenship, Amy B. Smoyer, Sarah J. Bray, Kristin Mattocks
Book Reviews
Workable Sisterhood: The Political Journey of Stigmatized Women with
HIV/AIDS, by
Reviewed By: Sally K Fauchald .
The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America, by
Reviewed By: Kimyona Roberts
ABSTRACTS
Black-White Disparities in HIV/AIDS: The Role of Drug Policy and the
Corrections System
Kim M. Blankenship, PhD; Amy B. Smoyer, MSW, MPA; Sarah J. Bray, JD;
Kristin Mattocks, PhD
Kim Blankenship is an Associate Research Scientist and Amy Smoyer is a
Research Associate at Yale University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research on
AIDS in Connecticut. Sarah Bray is a Law Clerk for the U.S. District Court,
Eastern District of New York. Kristin Mattocks is a Senior Scientist for Qualidigm
in Connecticut.
Abstract: African Americans in the United States are disproportionately affected
by HIV/AIDS. We focus in this paper on the structural and contextual sources of
HIV/AIDS risk, and suggest that among the most important of these sources are
drug policy and the corrections system. In particular, high rates of exposure to
the corrections system (including incarceration, probation, and parole) spurred in
large part by federal and state governments’ self-styled war on drugs in the
United States, have disproportionately affected African Americans. We review a
wide range of research literature to suggest how exposure to the corrections
system may affect the HIV/AIDS related risks of drug users in general, and the
disproportionate HIV risk faced by African Americans in particular. We then
discuss the implications of the information reviewed for structural interventions to
address African American HIV-related risk. Future research must further our
understanding of the relations among drug policy, corrections, and race-based
disparities in HIV/AIDS.
How Criminal System Racial Disparities May Translate into Health
Disparities
Martin Y. Iguchi, PhD; James Bell; Rajeev N. Ramchand; Terry Fain, MA, MS
Martin Iguchi is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of
Public Health in the Department of Community Health Sciences and an adjunct
senior behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation, Drug Policy Research
Center, where Terry Fain is a senior research analyst. James Bell is the Founder
and Executive Director of The W. Haywood Burns Institute for Juvenile Justice
Fairness and Equity in San Francisco. Rajeev Ramchand is a doctoral candidate
at The Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. Please
address correspondence to Dr. Iguchi at RAND, Drug Policy Research Center,
1776 Main Street, PO Box 2138, M3W, Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138.
Abstract: Disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. are strikingly
over-represented in the juvenile justice and adult criminal justice systems. This
paper briefly reviews the extent of over-representation attributable primarily to
drug offenses and an earlier conceptual framework introduced by Iguchi and
colleagues showing how the use of incarceration as a key drug control tool has
disproportionately affected the health and well being of racial and ethnic minority
communities. We then provide observations from the field that demonstrate how
the implementation of a quality assessment approach might be used to mitigate
procedural/structural biases that contribute to disparities in minority confinement,
and ultimately, to reduce disparities in access to resources and health care.