HIV/AIDS Among Women

“HIV has increasingly become a woman’s disease,” reports the New York State Department of Health. According to the DOH, females now account for 48 percent of new HIV infections among teens aged 13-19 and 43 percent of new infections among young adults, ages 20-24. The concentration of the HIV epidemic among women of color is dramatic. African-American and Hispanic women represent more than 85% of the women who are presumed to be living and diagnosed with HIV or AIDS.

Janice Carty, a 52-year-old African-American who is living with AIDS, is heavily involved and an advocate for a new initiative to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS towards women. “Women are in denial about HIV because it is traditionally known as a disease that only affects gay men,” she warns. Ms. Carty admits that she never thought she could get the disease either because she was a woman. “There is so much material and programs out there geared towards men, but what about women?” she asks.

This led to Janice’s involvement with Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), which initiated the Women’s Institute which, a “place that honors the whole woman - a place where women come together to grow, to rediscover their strengths, to heal and to rebuild their lives in a community of women who walk the same path to health and well-being.”



The Women’s Institute welcomes all women, as well as all stages of substance use as they seek to stabilize their lives. The institute is a place for families, where each family’s unique strengths are affirmed and where families find support and new ways to cope with living with HIV.

Janice , who has been a resident of Rivington House for about a year, was recently schooled on how to become an effective advocate. “As I was feeling better, I began to feel guilty that others weren’t,” she points out. “I decided to turn that guilt into positive energy to help others.” Janice is very well-liked amongst her peers and has a very warm and soothing personality. This made her new role even easier.

As an advocate for women’s HIV education, Janice has taken a hands-on approach with the Women’s Institute’s new awareness program Positive Prevention for Women, a program committed to providing women with coordinated access to comprehensive services with community-based organizations. The program is a six-week cyclical discussion group that covers a wide variety of women-focused topics ranging from living with HIV to nutrition to self-esteem, to negotiating safer sex. She will serve as an advocate, as well as a recruiter, to bring women who are and are not HIV positive to the group. “My goal is to raise overall awareness,” Carty explains. “We [women] need to pay more attention to our bodies. Drugs, alcohol and unsafe sex have cost the health well-being for too many women too many times.”

Janice’s hope is that this program will not only benefit women who are HIV positive, but will benefit women who are not, by providing them with the proper knowledge and skills to make more educated decisions in the life they lead. “Despite, popular belief, HIV is still very prominent,” Carty says. She is very concerned about young people practicing safe sex, and for those who are HIV positive to know everything there is to know about medications available and sticking to a good treatment adherence program. Janice warns her fellow women that “HIV is not going away easily, but with the right tools and the right knowledge, we can all live longer and healthier lives.”