One prominent campaign against HIV and AIDS consists of state-level laws which are meant to address education policies for the discussion of HIV and sex education. Looking at a 2012 dataset that discussed which states had sex education or HIV mandates as well as what the mandates consisted of, I analyzed the distribution of these laws in various regions of the U.S. and looked at the associations of various policies with HIV diagnoses rates.
There was little difference in HIV diagnoses rate per 100,000 people depending on whether or not a mandatory law was in place, so instead I decided to look at the regional variability of these mandatory sex and HIV education laws. Looking at the percent of states in each region that had mandatory laws, we see that the South had the highest percentage of states with mandatory sex education laws, but also had second lowest percentage of states with HIV education laws, falling just below the national distribution for these laws. We also see that only 42% of states and territories have mandatory sex education laws, but 65% of states have mandatory HIV education laws.
I then looked at the types of laws that these states had in place. States in the dataset were grouped on five types of sex education and four types of HIV education which featured various combinations of addressing abstinence and contraception. I recoded these qualitative descriptions on four variables—degrees of emphasizing abstinence and contraception for both HIV and sex education. Mentioning that the law “covers” either “abstinence” or “contraception” gave a value of 1 and if the practice was “stressed,” it received a value of 2. No mention of abstinence or contraception was coded as 0. The coding scheme for each description is available on the next page.
From my recoding, we could see that abstinence is more often stressed in HIV education policies than sex education policies. Additionally, we see that there is no policy that stresses contraception.
Looking at the distribution of the severity of these policies across regions, we see little regional variation about the degree to which policies are stressed.
Looking at the types of education policies in place, there is no clear trend over whether or not these policies are associated with lower rates of diagnoses per year. Consistently, the most radical policy (in red) occur in states with on average higher rates of HIV diagnoses, which suggests that—given that sex education policies and HIV education policies are implemented to lower rates of STIs—that states with tougher policies do so in response to existing higher rates of diagnoses in their states.
None of the regressions on diagnosis rate against HIV education type were statistically significant, so I plotted the means instead to get a sense of any trends that might exist.
I decided to look at whether or not these policies affected racial groups in varying amounts and found that Latinos and Black individuals follow the standard national trend that tougher policies in a state are associated with higher diagnoses rates per 100,000 people. White people, however did not follow this trend and this will be discussed later.
Latino Individuals
White Individuals
White individuals are the only racial group surveyed in which states that stress abstinence or cover contraception for sex education also have lower rates of diagnoses per 100,000 people of that ethnic or racial group. This leads me to suggest that, given that on the national average and for other racial groups these stricter policies are associated with an increased rate of diagnoses per 100,000 people, that they have a different effect on White individuals.
We should not say that these education policies increase the diagnosis rate of Back and Latino individuals or the overall population since these policies would not remain in place if they were having a negative effect on the problem they are trying to alleviate. Instead, these policies probably are being implemented in states that have higher rates of HIV diagnoses already But, given this fact, it is interesting that for the White population there is a different trend.
From this I attempt to make a causal claim that these policies have a greater impact on White individuals than members of minority groups, potentially enough to combat preexisting higher rates of diagnoses in these stricter states. This seems more likely than White individuals in states that stress abstinence having lower diagnoses rates to begin with. Given that the overall population and members of minority groups have higher diagnoses rates in these states with more severe policies and that HIV education policy for White individuals shows that more severe education policies are associated with higher diagnoses, the fact that White individuals have lower diagnoses rates for more severe sex education policies leads me to believe this is due to the policy and not because this population was this way before. I believe stricter sex education policies in schools reduces the HIV diagnoses rate for all individuals (given that this is the point), but I think the data here suggests that White individuals are more affected since it has lowered its rate to below the less-strict policies’ states and it has not done so for Black or Latino individuals, though where they started we cannot definitively say without longitudinal data.
We should not say that these education policies increase the diagnosis rate of Back and Latino individuals or the overall population since these policies would not remain in place if they were having a negative effect on the problem they are trying to alleviate. Instead, these policies probably are being implemented in states that have higher rates of HIV diagnoses already But, given this fact, it is interesting that for the White population there is a different trend.
From this I attempt to make a causal claim that these policies have a greater impact on White individuals than members of minority groups, potentially enough to combat preexisting higher rates of diagnoses in these stricter states. This seems more likely than White individuals in states that stress abstinence having lower diagnoses rates to begin with. Given that the overall population and members of minority groups have higher diagnoses rates in these states with more severe policies and that HIV education policy for White individuals shows that more severe education policies are associated with higher diagnoses, the fact that White individuals have lower diagnoses rates for more severe sex education policies leads me to believe this is due to the policy and not because this population was this way before. I believe stricter sex education policies in schools reduces the HIV diagnoses rate for all individuals (given that this is the point), but I think the data here suggests that White individuals are more affected since it has lowered its rate to below the less-strict policies’ states and it has not done so for Black or Latino individuals, though where they started we cannot definitively say without longitudinal data.
Datasets Accessed
Estimated HIV Rates 2011
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHHSTP) Atlas, accessed July 2013. http://kff.org/hivaids/state-indicator/estimated-rates-per-100000-of-hiv-diagnoses-adults-and-adolescents-by-raceethnicity/
HIV/Sex Education in Schools in 2012
Sex and STD/HIV Education, State Policies in Brief, Guttmacher Institute, June 1, 2012. http://kff.org/hivaids/state-indicator/sexhiv-education-policy/
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