DRUG-USE AND HIV RISKS AMONG AFRICAN-AMERICAN, MEXICAN-AMERICAN, AND PUERTO-RICAN DRUG INJECTORS

This article documents the prevalence of injection-related HIV risk be haviors among a sample of 758 Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, and Afri can-American drug injectors derived from the National Institute on Dru g Abuse Cooperative Agreement database. The results show that the two Hispanic subgroups had higher injection-related risks than the African -American group. Further, among Hispanics. Puerto Ricans had higher ra tes of drug injection than Mexican-Americans, but Mexican-Americans ha d higher rates of sharing injection paraphernalia than Puerto Ricans. The research suggests that more aggressive HIV/AIDS intervention effor ts be targeted to minority injection drug users, especially those that are contextualized by the racial/ethnic group targeted.