Welcome to the National HIV/AIDS Atlas

The National HIV/AIDS Atlas provides a powerful new tool to the public, health care professionals, policy makers and elected officials to access and map local, state and national data in order to see how HIV/AIDS is impacting their community. 

What is the Atlas?
For the first time, the Atlas presents county-level prevalence rates (based on the reported number of people living with HIV (non-AIDS) and AIDS in 2006) in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, depicting the intensity of the disease, rather than the magnitude. 

Why was the Atlas created?
Mapping HIV/AIDS is an important step in stemming the tide of the disease. The Atlas was developed to increase awareness of, and public access to, HIV/AIDS data so that communities better understand the reality of HIV/AIDS in the United States today. 

What does the Atlas show?
The Atlas allows users to focus on HIV/AIDS statistics by age, gender, and race/ethnicity, where available.  It also allows users to see their congressional and state legislative districts overlaid on top of the county-level data.

Atlas Considerations
The National Minority Quality Forum collected and processed data requests for the numbers of persons living with HIV (non-AIDS) and AIDS from all 50 US states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and New York City for the years 2005, 2006 and 2007. The HIV/AIDS Atlas displays county-level estimates for states where the data was available to the National Minority Quality Forum. Caution should be exercised when comparing different geographic regions. Table 1 describes in details the conditions under which the data was processed and available and under what conditions the data are comparable. The maps show prevalence rates (see methodology), not the total number of person living with HIV and AIDS.  In addition, as with all projects, there are limitations (see methodology) to the data that must also be considered when interpreting the maps. The ultimate goal is to have an accurate tool that is useful to providers, researchers and consumers to better understand the current state of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.