ATHENS, Ga. -- Twenty years after AIDS was discovered in America, health officials estimate 16,000 people per day worldwide will be infected with HIV. About half of them will die from AIDS. At this rate, 125,000 American children will lose one or both parents by 2005.

Rex Forehand, a UGA research professor and Director of the Institute for Behavioral Research, has completed the only study of its kind showing how inner-city families cope with an HIV-infected mother and how they can best move forward.

"The most noticeable and distressing thing, is that inner-city kids - whether their moms are infected or not - are not functioning particularly well," said Forehand, "but the kids whose mothers are infected do even worse in terms of emotional and behavioral problems, as well as scholastic achievement." The best remedy seems to be a positive parent/child relationship, a parent who imposes structure inside and outside the home, access to continuity of care for the mother, and her ability to maintain a deep religious faith.

Though the number of AIDS orphans could easily overwhelm our social service system, Forehand and his colleagues found this is not happening. Recent research shows that 95 percent of children belonging to moms who die of AIDS end up in the care of a grandmother or aunt instead of in state custody.

Since 1994, with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Forehand has assessed 100 non-infected children (aged 6-11 when the study began) whose mothers are HIV infected and 150 children whose mothers are not infected, all living in inner-city New Orleans.

---University of Georgia

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