Starting today, the Alachua County Health Department will kick off National Sexually Transmitted Disease Awareness Month with a number of awareness-raising activities.
Activities will include presentations to the Alachua Regional Juvenile Detention Center and several UF student organizations, as well as condom distribution at local Gainesville nightclubs, said Natalie Mullings, a disease intervention specialist and coordinator of STD awareness month at the health department.
Mullings said she hopes to prevent the spread of STDs by educating the community about the issue.
But prevention may prove difficult.
The recent release of a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that estimates one in four teenage girls in the U.S. has at least one STD.
Mullings said she is not surprised by the CDC's findings, especially since Alachua County's rate of chlamydia is about twice that of the rest of the state.
"I don't know if it's a lack of education or a feeling of invincibility, but youths just aren't wearing condoms," Mullings said.
The high incidence of chlamydia in the county will be the focus of the month-long activities, she said.In a Florida Reportable Diseases Report published last fall, the health department reported 1,077 cases of chlamydia in Alachua between January and August 2007.Ana Acosta, a fellow disease intervention specialist, attributes the large number of chlamydia cases to its lack of symptoms.
"It's curable, but most people don't know they have it and end up passing it to others," Acosta said.
The health department will offer on-site STD screenings at several locations including the St. Francis House homeless shelter and the Ronald McDonald House, Mullings said.Acosta and Mullings organized the presentations and activities for the month, which will begin with putting posters that feature STD statistics on Gainesville Regional Transit System buses.
The month will close with an STD Awareness Fair in the Gainesville Downtown Community Plaza on May 3.
Mullings hopes the numbers will be enough to motivate people to get tested.
"The rates are alarming," she said.
"It's scary."
