By ESTHER J. CEPEDA
Scripps Howard News Service

Behold the spectacle of the incredible invisible Hispanic woman. She and her sisters walk among us, over 20 million strong, young and old, U.S.-born and immigrant, legal and illegal, yet undetectable to the mainstream eye.

This month we heard about the "Hidden Epidemic" -- a major public-health crisis affecting one in every four teen-age girls -- when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study estimating 3.2 million young women between the ages of 14 and 19 are infected with the human papilloma virus, chlamydia, herpes simplex virus and/or trichomoniasis.

Media accounts made it clear these shocking numbers, gleaned from 838 randomly chosen study participants, were even worse for black women. A stunning 48 percent of those young women were infected with one or more STDs, compared to 20 percent of white women.

And the 20 million Latinas -- just those counted by the U.S. Census' last tally in July 2006, that is -- well, they just don't exist. At least not in this "nationally representative study."

READ MORE: http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/31682

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