Paying the Price for Late Starts and Early Stops: Racial and Sex Disparities in HIV‐Related Mortality

It is well documented that black and Hispanic individuals are significantly overrepresented among individuals with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and/or AIDS in the United States. Equally concerning is the fact that black individuals who are infected with HIV, compared with their white counterparts, have a higher mortality rate and shorter time to death after HIV diagnosis. After the introduction of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in 1996, AIDSrelated mortality decreased significantly until 1998, at which point it leveled off, remaining essentially unchanged through 2005. The percentage of decrease was smallest for black individuals, particularly black women, who experienced a 44% decrease, compared with a 79% decrease among white men [1]. In 2007, 9436 black or Hispanic individuals died as a result of HIV-related disease; this is more than double the number of white individuals who died of such causes in the same year [2]. Eighty-four percent of white patients survived 136 months after