County Plans to Fight STDs

County Plans to Fight STDs

Los Angeles County today is rolling out a bilingual awareness campaign to help curb recent rising rates of syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea. Half the $1.3 million campaign's resources will go to advertising; the rest will be used to help staff cope with the anticipated increase in screening and partner notification.

The campaign will include promotional drink coasters, murals, and sidewalk chalk art, as well as billboards and bus ads. The people the county is targeting are gay and bisexual men, African-American men and women, and Latinas - those most affected by the STD increases, said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of the county Department of Health.

Gay and bisexual men comprised more than two-thirds of the county's roughly 1,200 syphilis cases in 2005, representing a 365 percent increase since 2001. Sixty-seven percent of the county's female chlamydia cases were African Americans, and 65 percent of its female gonorrhea cases were African Americans or Latinas.

Reacting to the sharp increase in syphilis cases recorded in 2005, the county last year ordered a new campaign to replace the one starring "Phil the syphilis sore," which ran between 2002 and 2005.

One poster in the new campaign features a man standing outside a shower, a towel around his waist, with the slogan: "Check Yourself: Don't Assume You're Coming Off Clean." Posters about chlamydia show black women and Latinas with the note: "I know that hooking up can have a downside. That over 30,000 women in L.A. get chlamydia every year. That chlamydia is curable."

Organizations, including AIDS Project Los Angeles and AIDS Healthcare Foundation, stressed the need for continuous efforts to keep STDs on the public's radar. "We have to set up a system in which every sexually active person gets screened at least every six months, the same as having our teeth cleaned," said AHF President Michael Weinstein.

Los Angeles Times (06.26.07):: Mary Engel

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