The Impact of HIV on the Latinx Community in the U.S.

By Brittany Rose
September 30, 2024

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In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, we take a look at the impact of HIV/AIDS on the Latinx community in the United States.

The following information—adapted from "How HIV Impacts Latinos in the U.S." on TheBody—highlights the unique struggles that Latinx people face with respect to HIV prevention and treatment. All quotations, facts and statistics are pulled from that article.

Risk Factors

According to the CDC, "racism, discrimination, xenophobia, stigma, homophobia, economic disparities, health care discrimination, and linguistic barriers [are] just a few of the many things that put America's Latinx population at risk for HIV. While HIV is often associated with sex or using drugs, we now know that HIV is a disease of marginalization and not one that is tied to specific behaviors or identities."

Population-wide Statistics

CDC data shows that: "Of the 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States as of 2019, about 294,200 were Latinx. That is a significant overrepresentation: About one-quarter of people living with HIV in the United States are Latinx, who make up less than one-fifth of the total population."

It also indicates:

"Of the estimated 34,800 people diagnosed with HIV in 2019, about 25%—10,200—were Latinx. That represents the second-largest group of people diagnosed with HIV after Black Americans."

Latinx Women

Within the Latinx community, people of different genders experience specific HIV-related risk factors at different rates. First, we highlight challenges faced by Latinx women.

Latinx women are disproportionately more likely to acquire HIV when compared to their share of the population, and they are four times as likely as white women to develop AIDS. Factors that affect health outcomes for Latinx women include:

  • Lower rates of education and worse access to quality education than the general public
  • The largest wealth gap of any racial or ethnic group (Latinx women earn 57 cents for every dollar earned by white men.)
  • Latinx cultural ideas, such as:
    • The principle that women should be passive and accept men’s sexual decisions, including those about condom use
    • Beliefs held by some Latinx Catholics that condoms should not be used at all (or at least that women should not make decisions about their use)

Latinx Men

Latinx men also face a set of risk factors unique to them. According to the source article: "Of all new HIV diagnoses among Latinx people in 2019, Latinx men accounted for 89% of the total, with the majority of those (87%) in gay or bisexual men."

Some factors that influence this are:

  • Because Latinx men face barriers with access to high-quality medical care, they are less likely to know their HIV status than white or Black men.
  • They are also less likely to be prescribed PrEP and less likely to be virally suppressed than white men. Though 25% of all gay and bisexual men in the U.S. use PrEP, only 21% of Latinx gay and bisexual men do.
  • Furthermore, "Latinx gay and bisexual men report older sexual partners than their non-Latinx counterparts, meaning that their sexual partners potentially have had more sexual partners, while also meaning that there is a potential for a power difference between sexual partners."

Latinx Transgender People

The Latinx transgender population experiences higher rates of HIV infection than the general transgender population, and this effect is most pronounced for trans Latinx women. While 14% of all transgender women live with HIV, that number is 35% among trans Latinx women.

These disparities are fed by:

  • Generally higher rates of poverty, homelessness, and unemployment than in the white transgender population: Nearly 2/3 of trans women surveyed by the CDC were living at or below the poverty level, with 42% having experienced homelessness in the past year.
  • Interventions for cisgender people that are not adapted well for transgender people
  • Lower rates of PrEP use "due to medical mistrust, lack of trans-inclusive marketing, and concerns about interactions between PrEP and hormones"

Latinx Immigrants

Immigration status also plays a role in HIV treatment and prevention:

"Latinx immigrants comprise about a third of all HIV diagnoses among U.S. Latinx people, according to a study published in PLoS One in 2022. Immigrants are at greater risk when it comes to HIV than their U.S.-born counterparts because of the unique challenges they face, including limited access to health care services and, when access is available, lack of services delivered in a language they speak."

Shared Barriers

Though some of the barriers to HIV screening, diagnosis, and treatment that Latinx people face are gender-specific or related to immigration status, others are shared by the community as a whole.

These barriers include:

  • HIV-related stigma
  • Knowledge gaps around HIV and sexual health
  • Mental health problems
  • Substance use
  • Lack of access to health insurance
  • Lack of access to culturally competent care
  • Lack of economic resources
  • Xenophobia
  • Language barriers
  • Poverty
  • Mistrust of the health care system

The full source article from TheBody, including additional statistics not reproduced in this blog, can be found here.