Diseases Follow a Persistent Pattern

HIV/AIDS
The AIDS epidemic, concentrated on Chicago’s North Side in the 1980s, spread to the West and South sides in the mid- to late-1990s. Between 1984 and 1986, four community areas averaged at least 10 HIV and AIDS-related deaths per 100,000 people: Lake View, Lincoln Park, Near North Side and Uptown. Ten years later, 18 community areas recorded HIV/AIDS death rates greater than 40 per 100,000. Of those, 12 were at least 90 percent black and one was 62 percent Latino. The city’s overall death rate reached a peak of 35.3 in 1995, but has since been declining, and was down to 14 in 1997. Rates for African Americans also have dropped, but remain high: from 52 in 1995 to 25.3 in 1997.

Breast Cancer
In 1980, black and white women in Chicago died from breast cancer at close to the same rates: 15.2 and 14.9 per 100,000 people, respectively. By 1997, however, the death rate for white women had fallen dramatically, to 10.3, while the rate for black women climbed to 20.5

Diabetes
Although the citywide death rate for diabetes has held steady since 1980, white rates have dropped while black and Latino rates continued to climb. Since 1989, the Hispanic mortality rate increased from 37 per 100,000 to 60. Between 1994 and 1996, the rates varied across the city from a low of five deaths per 100,000 in Edison Park on the Northwest Side to a high of 46 in Fuller Park on the near South Side.

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Death rates from chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, which include some forms of asthma, bronchitis and emphysema, are rising for all racial groups, with the largest increase among African Americans. Between 1980 and 1997, the death rate for blacks climbed from 14 per 100,000 to 23. Rates among whites have climbed from 13 to 16.

Sources: U.S. Census, Chicago Department of Public Health; analyzed by The Chicago Reporter.