In this year’s first issue of the Journal of Urban Health, Dr. Natalie Crawford, assistant professor of epidemiology at Georgia State University School of Public Health – along with colleagues from Columbia, UCLA, Hopkins, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute – examine the social pathways of HIV Risk. They find that high-risk social ties foretell differences in opportunity for HIV exposures and may contribute to racial/ethnic disparities in HIV transmission. Discrimination may affect the formation of high-risk social ties and has not been explored as a possible explanation for these persistent disparities.