Gonorrhea
LA gives home test kits for chlamydia, gonorrhea
LOS ANGLES—South Los Angeles girls and women looking for discreet sexually transmitted disease testing will be able to visit high-tech kiosks to get free home-testing kits as part of an innovative program that aims to cut costs.
Public health directors all over the United States are watching Monday’s announced expansion of the $2.5 million Los Angeles “I Know” campaign. If self-testing proves effective in reducing illnesses, it could also be a solution to budget cuts that have forced the closure of clinics that tested for STDs in Los Angeles County and elsewhere.
In 1996, there were 36 sexually transmitted disease testing clinics in the county, and today there are only 12, said Dr. Peter Kerndt, director of the county’s STD program.
“We want medical services to be available all the time, but with clinic closures we had real reason to be concerned,” Kerndt said.
Using the new model, the county will have to turn around some of the nation’s worst health statistics to prove their program works.
Los Angeles County leads the country in the number of chlamydia cases and is second in gonorrhea cases, with the highest concentration of both illnesses in the young minority female populations of South Los Angeles, said county public health director Dr. Jonathan Fielding.
Eight kiosks in South Los Angeles will distribute free kits for girls and women under age 25 to perform a simple swab test and return the specimen to a lab. A week later, women can get test results online or by phone— and if necessary, free treatment and follow-up counseling.
Women don’t have to use their real names to get a kit, though a cellphone number or email is required so the health department can contact them with results.
The gonorrhea and chlamydia test kit costs $6, and it costs another $20 for a lab to run the tests—far less than what a brick-and-mortar clinic visit would cost the county, said Jorge Montoya, director of outreach and control for the county STD program.
From test to treatment, the service is free of charge or scrutiny to the user.
“Shame is not a cure for any communicable disease—it’s not the cure for tuberculosis and it is not the cure for any sexually transmitted disease, either,” said county supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who spearheaded the campaign for his constituents.
Chlamydia and gonorrhea are curable, but can cause serious health problems if left untreated, including sterility and tubal problems in childbirth.
Program administrators say young women who are nervous about being spotted at a clinic will feel less self-conscious about visiting a kiosk at a pharmacy.
The kiosks are a new phase in the program that launched in June 2009 to allow women to order kits online or by text, and provide women with kits without asking for an address where the test can be discovered by others, said Kerndt.
Even so, Kerndt says the results from the first phase of the program have been encouraging.
According to county statistics, in the program’s first year 2,927 kits were ordered, and little more than half were returned. Of those tested about 8.5 percent were found to be positive for one or both STDs, a rate that is higher than many clinics serving young women.
About 95 percent of those who test positive for chlamydia and gonorrhea follow up for treatment, a single-dose antibiotic, said Kerndt.
In 2010, Los Angeles County recorded 54,149 cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea, with 61 percent of cases being found in women, the majority of whom were between 15 and 24 years old.
Similar programs have been implemented in Alameda and San Mateo counties, and state health officials are considering a statewide program modeled after the Los Angeles program, said Kerndt.
The program is also placing a strong emphasis on community outreach. In a move that bucks conservative Christian thought, which encourages abstinence until marriage, local churches have banded together to support Ridley-Thomas’ initiative.
“It is absolutely the Christian thing to do” to reach past taboo and put health concerns first, said Denise Hunter, president of the First AME Church with 19,000 constituents in South LA.
“We recognize in the interfaith community that abstinence is ideal—but we have to take it from ideal to reality,” Hunter said.
A coalition of women from area churches are slated to engage in workshops to learn how to have constructive conversations about sexual health with young people and engage struggling young women in moral but candid conversations about love, relationships, sex, molestation and developing the self-esteem to care for their individual sexual health.
It’s a taboo conversation that is not always had in homes or schools, but information that young women need to be safe, Hunter said.
“We’re not trying to be parents,” said Hunter. “We have a very real understanding of the pressures they face now and we really are trying to engage to protect them.”
STD Testing Program Embraced By South Los Angeles Churches
When sexually transmitted diseases make the news in Los Angeles, it’s usually a high-profile casecontracted in the adult film industry.
But thousands are silently suffering all over Los Angeles county. Public health chief Dr. Jonathan Fielding says that Los Angeles has more chlamydia cases and the second-highest number of gonorrhea cases than any other county in the United States, according to CBS Los Angeles. In Los Angeles County, young minority women in South Los Angeles are the ones most likely to be infected.
That’s why County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas launched a campaign to get home STD test kits in the hands of any woman who wants it, and he’s come up with some unlikely allies. In a press releasesent out last Monday, Ridley-Thomas is counting the “First Ladies of the Faith-based community” (i.e. pastors’ wives) in the fight against sexually transmitted diseases and the dangerous complications that can result from lack of treatment.
One such “first lady,” Debra Williams of McCoy Memorial Baptist Church, tells the Los Angeles Times that “Nobody wants to talk about it” but “we need to change that.” In the same article, Ridley-Thomas praised the churches’ involvement in the effort, saying, “This is probably the first time you have pastors and first ladies coming forward to address an issue that heretofore has been considered taboo.”
The test kits were part of an initial experimental program in 2009, but Ridley-Thomas’s initiative is making the effort more comprehensive with new high-tech features and a community outreach component. Touch-screen computer kiosks are being rolled out in pharmacies throughout Los Angeles an an alternative to ordering the free kits online, enabling women to receive the kit immediately instead of waiting for it to come in the mail. According to the Los Angeles Times, the kiosks will eventually be available in community centers and schools.
As for the community outreach, that’s something that the churches are stepping up to tackle. Salya Mohamedy, a health staffer at Ridley-Thomas’ Inglewood offices, spoke with LA Weekly about the social aspects that need to be addressed when it comes to STDs.
“We’re dealing with a network — they’re reinfecting or infecting each other within that area,” says Mohamedy. In other words, each guy is doing multiple girls.
That’s why, on top of providing easier access to testing kits, the church will be brainstorming ways to empower its female youth. “It’s about self-esteem — it’s about realizing that you’re worth a lot more than that to this community,” says Mohamedy.
