HIV Google Map Gives New Perspective on Epidemic

HIV Google Map Gives New Perspective on Epidemic: "

The 30th anniversary of HIV is just around the corner, and a new interactive map reveals U.S. data on the disease’s distribution. The information is as granular as individual counties and, for some cities, even zip codes.

The nonprofit mapping effort, called AIDSVu, isn’t a perfect representation of the disease in the United States. The visualization is based on 2008 data, and some states didn’t contribute the county or demographic information that others did. The map shows only diagnosed rates and cases. An estimated one in five HIV carriers in the United States are undiagnosed.

Despite these limitations, it may be the most thorough geographical depiction of HIV ever created.

“It shows HIV doesn’t respect borders like statistical reports do, and shows how far it’s reached into every part of the country, even rural areas,” said epidemiologist Patrick Sullivan of Emory University, one of the project’s leaders. “You can, for example, see a corridor of infection that goes down through the southeast. This is a new way of looking at this epidemic.”

Laws in every U.S. state require testing centers to report HIV-positive diagnoses, stripped of private information, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet, building a map using this data was a massive undertaking.

AIDSVu leaders spent more than a year and a half coordinating the data’s entry into a single Google map. With just a few clicks, it shows county-by-county HIV cases and rates, and the epidemic’s patterns by gender, poverty, ethnicity and other demographics.

New York City and Washington D.C. even show the disease’s reach by zip code. For example, in zip code 10036, where this story was written, the rate of people diagnosed with HIV is at least 1.95 percent. That’s about three times New York state’s average.

The AIDSVu map will be continually updated as fresh data arrives. The organization hopes states and counties that didn’t provide more detailed data will change their minds, helping create an even more complete picture of the epidemic.

Image: Screenshot of the AIDSVu interactive map. (AIDSVu)

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