North Carolina and the Problem of AIDS

Advocacy, Politics, and Race in the South

By Stephen J. Inrig

224 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 4 figs., 1 tables, notes, bibl., index

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-1883-8
    Published: August 2014
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-0-8078-6915-4
    Published: December 2011
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-8435-0
    Published: December 2011

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Thirty years after AIDS was first recognized, the American South constitutes the epicenter of the United States' epidemic. Southern states claim the highest rates of new infections, the most AIDS-related deaths, and the largest number of adults and adolescents living with the virus. Moreover, the epidemic disproportionately affects African American communities across the region. Using the history of HIV in North Carolina as a case study, Stephen Inrig examines the rise of AIDS in the South in the period from the early spread and discovery of the disease through the late nineties.

Drawing on epidemiological, archival, and oral history sources, Inrig probes the social determinants of health that put poor, rural, and minority communities at greater risk of HIV infection in the American South. He also examines the difficulties that health workers and AIDS organizations faced in reaching those communities, especially in the early years of the epidemic. His analysis provides an important counterweight to most accounts of the early history of the disease, which focus on urban areas and the spread of AIDS in the gay community. As one of the first historical studies of AIDS in a southern state, North Carolina and the Problem of AIDS provides powerful insight into the forces and factors that have made AIDS such an intractable health problem in the American South and the greater United States.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of the American South,

About the Author

Stephen J. Inrig is assistant professor of clinical science at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He received his Ph.D. from Duke University and had a fellowship at the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 2007 to 2008.
For more information about Stephen J. Inrig, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

“Impeccably detailed and incisive. . . a timely addition to the growing literature on AIDS. . . . This book will be of especial interest to social historians with an interest in the interaction between disease and poverty.”--Vesalius

"Thanks to this lively book, the history of AIDS and the heroism of its first victims and their supporters will never be forgotten."--Journal of Southern History

“Inrig’s clearly written study deftly integrates demographic, medical, and social history to show how health policy is formed. It will be a key resource for scholars in the history of medicine and public policy and for all who wish to better understand the complexities of the AIDS crisis.”--Journal of American History

“Provides a template for understanding the current epidemic in the South, and in Black communities nationwide.”--American Quarterly

"In this compelling book, Stephen Inrig seeks to understand why HIV prevention has done so poorly in North Carolina and the toll that failure has left. This is an extremely important contribution to the history of AIDS not only in North Carolina, but in the United States as a whole."--Ronald Bayer, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University

“Interviewing key characters in the story, Stephen Inrig has created a book that will be a primary source for future investigations of the epidemic. He has done an invaluable service by preserving these people’s voices and helping us understand them in the context of today’s society. I found myself engrossed in the story Inrig tells.”--Todd Savitt, East Carolina University, author of Race and Medicine in Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century America