STD Quarterly
Teen STD information is available on the web
Check the following web sites to get teen-friendly information to share with your adolescent patients:
1. American Social Health Organization’s I Wanna Know. Web: www.iwannaknow.org.
This comprehensive teen sexual health web site, operated by the Research Triangle Park, NC-based American Social Health Organization, offers fingertip access to dynamic and reliable sexual health information for teens and their parents. Teens can search for answers by looking through a list of frequently asked questions, drawn from queries repeatedly asked during chat sessions held on the site Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 5-7 p.m. Eastern Time or from web site e-mail. Of current interest is a list of questions for teens to ask tattoo artists and body piercers, whose potential use of unsterilized, unclean needles may lead to spread of hepatitis B or C.
2. Kaiser Family Foundation’s Youth and HIV/STDs. Web: www.kff.org.
The Menlo Park, CA-based Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation web site offers a number of resources on adolescents and STDs. Click on "Youth & HIV/STDs" under "Topics" on the site’s main page. The site offers results from the Foundation’s National Survey of Teens on HIV/ AIDS 2000, a nationally representative survey of ages 12-17, designed to assess attitudes and knowledge about the epidemic among a generation at risk.
Of interest is Get Informed Get the Facts, a publication aimed at those at risk for HIV/STDs. The publication offers a section on "Should I Get Tested?" which answers questions on testing intervals.
3. Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Teenwire. Web: www.teenwire.com.
Current information on STD and pregnancy prevention is presented in a teen-friendly manner on this web site, operated by the New York City-based Planned Parenthood Federation of America. It offers an archive of answers to such questions as "Can you get STIs (sexually transmitted infections) from kissing?" and "Can you get crabs by having sex?"
4. MEDLINEplus Health Information. Web: www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/teenhealth.html.
Choose from a number of resources listed in the Teen Sexual Health section of MEDLINEplus, which offers free health information from the world’s largest medical library, the Bethesda-based National Library of Medicine. This site offers links to the latest adolescent health news, as well as information on nutrition, prevention and screening, research, specific conditions, and teen health organizations.
5. Scarleteen. Web: www.scarleteen.com.
Scarleteen, owned by Heather Corinna, a Minneapolis-based writer and educator, provides up-to-date information on sexuality and reproductive health for teens, young adults, parents, and educators. Billed as "sex education for the real world," the site’s "Infection Section" covers common STDs and offers a quick risk assessment for such infections.
6. Coalition for Positive Sexuality. Web: www.positive.org.
The Washington, DC-based Coalition for Positive Sexuality, a grass-roots organization formed to provide candid sex education materials, maintains this site with information that it terms is "pro-safe sex, pro-teen, pro-choice, pro-queer, and pro-woman." It features "Just Say Yes," a guide that offers answers to many sexual health questions, such as "What if I get a disease?"
Check the following web wites to get teen-friendly information to hare with your adolescent patients...
You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content