By Peggy O'Farrell
The Cincinnati Enquirer

In the 20 years since Cincinnati's first AIDS organization was founded, the face of the epidemic has changed dramatically.

Here and across the United States, those with the disease are skewing younger and poorer, and it is striking more women and minorities.

When AIDS Volunteers of Cincinnati was established in 1983, the clientele were all white men. Today, 70 percent of the people served by AVOC are people of color, says executive director Victoria Brooks.

"AIDS has become a disease of poverty, a disease of color and a disease of addiction," Brooks says. "And it's becoming younger, much younger."

With 40,000 new HIV infections a year in the United States, the virus has become a fixture in the public's awareness, says Dr. Peter Frame, an HIV/AIDS expert with the University of Cincinnati's Infectious Disease Center. Frame has been treating local AIDS patients since the first case was reported here in 1982.

Hamilton County mirrors national trends in HIV infections. More than half of all new infections - 54 percent - occur in blacks. Among women, 64 percent of new infections are black; among men, half of those newly infected are black.

In 2001, 13 percent of Ohio residents living with AIDS or HIV were diagnosed when they were 20 to 29 years old.