"Baker says the community's high level of poverty goes hand-in-hand with a lack of education.
"Sharkey and Issaquena (Rolling Fork's two neighboring counties) are probably the two poorest counties in the poorest state in the union," he says. "Education is not a high priority for these people. A lot of them don't graduate high school. If they do, that's all they do. They have to work."
Christopher Murray, of the non-profit Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, a non-profit that studies factors that contribute to health, says that "findings are incredibly robust" that a lack of education may be as important an explanation as poverty for poor health in communities worldwide.
AIDS activist Cedric Sturdevant, 46, of Jackson, Miss., who was diagnosed with HIV in 2006, says misinformation about HIV helps fuel Mississippi's epidemic. "Most people still think it's a gay man's disease," Sturdevant says."