In support of April as STD and HIV awareness month, MTV and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention teamed up to host a telephone press conference yesterday to discuss the prevalence and prevention of STD’s and HIV on college campuses around the nation.
Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB prevention at the CDC, and Jason Rzepka, vice president of MTV public affairs, hosted the press conference that aimed to spread awareness and remove taboos regarding STD’s in America and promote the “Get Yourself Tested” campaign.
“The reality is that stigma, shame and lack of testing remain some of the key factors that contribute to the high number of STD infections in our country today,” Fenton said. “Young men and young women have to take the responsibility of protecting both themselves and their partners.”
The CDC estimates that as many as one in two sexually active young people will contract an STD by age 25 and 19 million new cases of STD’s occur each year, many of which go undiagnosed.
“STD testing is one of the most effective prevention tools available,” Fenton said.
To help combat the negative perceptions of testing, “It’s Your (Sex) Life,” an ongoing partnership of MTV and the Kaiser Family Foundation is working with Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the CDC and other partners nationwide to implement the Get Yourself Tested campaign.
“All of our programs were developed to de-stigmatize testing — to make it something you can be proud of as a part of a healthy lifestyle,” Rzepka said. “We’re really committed to partnering with our audience and all of you to reverse the course of the national HIV and STD trend.”
The campaign is hosting a Get Yourself Tested Now campus challenge, asking students nationwide to pledge to get tested, he said.
The campaign offers reward incentives beyond just general good health, Rzepka said. The school that gets the most pledges will be featured on MTV News, and students on the winning campus will win a trip in summer 2010 with accommodations and tickets to see Cobra Starship, Travis McCoy and more.
Students can sign up for the challenge on the campaign’s Web site, GYTnow.com, which also provides facts on STD’s, tips on bringing up the issue of testing with your partners and health care providers, and a testing center locator.
“It’s key to note that we are making this a top priority [with our] efforts throughout the month working to connect with young people everywhere they are,” Rzepka said.
Statistics showed success from last year’s campaign, with an increase in traffic to Planned Parenthood clinics across the country, he said.
Fenton believes the Get Yourself Tested campaign is a tangible way to engage young people from all walks of life in the fight against STD’s.
“Given everything we know about how to prevent, diagnose and treat STD’s, I would say that it is unacceptable that STD’s remain such a widespread problem in the U.S. today,” he said.
Fenton said the two most common STD’s are chlamydia and gonorrhea, and since early treatment is more effective, early diagnosis is necessary.
Though the disease affects both sexes, in the past years the majority of reported chlamydia cases actually occurred among young teenage girls between the ages 15 to 19, he said.
Human Papillomavirus, or HPV, is also of particular concern for women, he said. CDC data suggests that from 2003 to 2004, as many as 7.5 million women between the ages of 14 to 24 years old were infected with the virus.
Prevention is key in the fight against HPV, and girls between the ages of 11 to 26 should be vaccinated, Fenton said.
The African-American population has also been disproportionately affected by chlamydia and gonorrhea, Fenton said.
“Despite making up just 12 percent of the U.S. population, African Americans accounted for about half of all reported chlamydia cases and about 71 percent of all gonorrhea cases reported in 2008,” he said.
There is also an increased concern with the increasing number of HIV infections, particularly among those in the gay and bisexual communities, Fenton said.
The rate of new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men is more than 44 times than that of other men and more than 40 times than that of women, he said.
Rutgers U. students like Patrick Banal, a School of Environmental and Biological Sciences junior, think the joint MTV and CDC project is a great way to garner awareness for HIV and STD’s.
“I don’t think there’s enough information about STD’s out there — both in general and on college campuses,” Banal said. “I think that the media promotes young people to have sex more than the consequences of those actions.”
Latoshia Bost, a Rutgers senior, said there is not enough information about STD’s available on campus and supports this project as a way to help the situation.
“I think a lot of students aren’t getting testing because they are scared to talk about it and know the results,” Bost said. “If there is information, it’s not prevalent on campus. I rarely see anything regarding STD information.”
Rutgers junior Dan Scheiber said he believes that the campaign’s Facebook page will be an effective way to reach out to students.
“A lot of people use Facebook right now, so I would say that’s the easiest method to [spread awareness], and it would get the most people [involved],” Scheiber said.