You?re the First One I?ve Told: The Faces of HIV in the Deep South

The Deep South has seen a 36 percent increase in AIDS cases while the rest of the nation has seen a 2 percent decline. Many of the underlying reasons for the disease’s continued spread in the region—ignorance about HIV, reluctance to get tested, non-adherence to treatment protocols, resistance to behavioral changes—remain unaddressed by policymakers.

In this extensively revised second edition, Kathryn Whetten and Brian Wells Pence present a rich discussion of twenty-five ethnographic life stories of people living with HIV in the South. Most importantly, they incorporate research from their recent quantitative study, “Coping with HIV/AIDS in the Southeast” (CHASE), which includes 611 HIV-positive patients from North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana. This new edition continues to bring the participants’ voices to life while highlighting how the CHASE study confirmed many of the themes that originally emerged from the life histories. This is the first cohesive compilation of up-to-date evidence on the unique and difficult aspects of living with HIV in the Deep South.

KATHRYN WHETTEN, MPH, PhD, is a professor of public policy and global health at Duke University and the director of the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research. She is the author of Drinkers, Drivers, and Bartenders: Balancing Private Choice and Public Accountability.

BRIAN W. PENCE, MPH, PhD, is an associate professor of community and family medicine and global health at Duke University’s Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research.