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Expert offers advice for slowing the spread of STDs

Category: Sexually Transmitted Diseases

In order to contain the spread of sexually transmitted disease, experts say the U.S. needs to deploy a more intensive strategy that involves outreach and STD testing. This could have a positive impact on infection rates.

Dr. Peter Leone, an STD expert at the University of North Carolina, told Live Science that the U.S. should look to social networks to spread public health messages. Furthermore, STD testing strategies should make efforts to trace infections from one person to the next to find out who is spreading diseases. This could enable public health officials to intervene.

"We really need to prioritize," Leone told the news source. "Given the at-risk population, we really need to ask what the primary drivers are. Otherwise, we're continuing to treat the pathogen when the problem is not the pathogen, it’s the environment."

He added that studying social networks can help public health officials understand how infections move through populations, which may aid in the development of strategies to contain outbreaks.

Encouraging STD testing may be the single most important thing public health agencies can do to slow the spread of diseases. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that every sexually active adult consider getting screened for infections.