High STD Infection Rates in PG County

With the upcoming celebration of Valentine’s Day, the Healthy Turtle thought it might be a good time to examine some aspects of sexual health. Later this week, we’ll be live-blogging from the “Speaking of Books” lecture by Dr. Robin Sawyer, but today, we have a bit of news.

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control released its most recent Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance, a yearly examination of the infection rates of a number of STDs (most notably syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia). To find more information about the report, click here to visit the CDC site.

The most recent data (this report is a collection of data from 2007) outlines a number of alarming trends, but one in particular hit too close to home—we address the problem and its implications in the article below:

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Prince George’s County has among the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the nation, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control—but some wonder how much these numbers affect students on Maryland’s campus.

Released in January, the CDC report placed Prince George’s County in the top 2 percent of counties and independent cities nationwide in reported cases of STDs. The report, which collects data from health departments nationwide, ranked the area at 30th for syphilis cases, 43rd in chlamydia and 55th in gonorrhea.

“Look at these statistics—it’s terrible,” Dr. Stacey Daughters said as she read through the report. But Dr. Daughters, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community and Public Health, stressed the importance of not immediately generalizing these numbers to Maryland students.

“We can say ‘Wow, these are very alarming and they do raise some red flags,’ but there are a lot of questions that need to be answered,” Daughters said. “We can use this data as a jumping point for researchers to move forward and understand why these high rates of STDs exist.”

Daughters noted that the report did not mention the ages, income levels or other biographical specifics of the cases in Prince George’s County. High rates of STDs are often found, she said, in conjunction with other societal ills—substance or drug abuse, crime, and high unemployment level—which could, but not necessarily, explain the elevated numbers.

“You want to figure out who’s infected and why before you say everyone is at risk,” Dr. Daughters said, adding that her first reaction to the data was not that Maryland students were in trouble.

April McDowell, a doctoral student in the Department of Family Science, is also concerned about high infection rates, and believes that Maryland is in a prime spot to educate not only students but also the wider PG County community on the dangers of STDs.

“I believe there are immediate, short-term actions that we could take to help reduce this burden and improve Prince George's County's standings in the CDC report,” McDowell said, who suggested community events and working through local media outlets as possible actions.

To their credit, many in the university community have been in the sexual health education business for some time now. A group McDowell helps to lead, the Maryland Council on Family Relations, is currently planning a donation drive for a “local non-profit agency that provides services and care to women affected by HIV/AIDS,” according to McDowell.

The University Health Center offers almost daily women’s health education classes for students to learn about contraceptives and preventive treatment. They also provide free condoms to students through their pharmacy and several containers located throughout the center.

“We would rather that you have condoms and not need them than need them and not have them,” reads the Health Center Web site. “But please, be considerate of your fellow Terrapins and only take what you think you may use.”

The CDC report offered other alarming trends on infections rates, particularly in young people. According to the report, almost half the of the approximately 19 million new STD infections in 2007 occurred in people ages 15-24, and the chlamydia infection rates among young women ages 15-19 and 20-24 have are higher than all other women combined.

For more information on the CDC report, visit their Web site here. Click here for the full version (in pdf) and here for the Web-friendly version.