STD Awareness Month

Okay.  I did it again.  I put off writing about important medical tests.  March was National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.  I waited until the end of the month to write about it, just as I imagine people have put off colorectal cancer screening.  As a quick reminder, you don’t have to get screened during National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.  You can get screened in any month.

I did even worse in April.  April was STD Awareness Month and here we are in May and I’m finally writing about it.  In the end of March, CHC’s grand rounds were about ‘Managing STI in the Primary Care Setting’. 

Sometimes, medical professionals talk about sexually transmitted diseases (STD), and sometimes they talk about sexually transmitted infections (STI).  It probably makes the most sense to talk about STIs.  Infections cause symptoms and when the symptoms appear, they become called diseases.  Yet part of the problem with STIs is when people have not developed any symptoms they can still transmitted infections others.

STIs are a big problem in the United States, with 19 million cases each year.  Young people and racial ethnic minorities are disproportionally affected.  Connecticut statewide statistics show this is also the case here.

MTV, together with the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Center for Disease Control, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and other organizations run a program called Get Yourself Tested.  They’ve been running a show, MTV’s 10 Most Outrageous Sex Myths.  So, just because I was late again on an important health issue, doesn’t mean you should get continue to put off being tested if you might be at risk. 

Now, onto Mental Health Awareness Month and Skin Cancer Awareness Month.