Age, race, class and HPV

Elizabeth — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:01:02 -0700

Mojave66, that's interesting about the age-HPV thing. And the intersection of class and health is so important. Thanks for emphasizing it! I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about how to address those problems!

>We know that

Mojave66 — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:53:03 -0700

>We know that abstinance-only "education" is not really education. We know that lots of infections go undetected because of shame or embarrassment on the one hand, or because of lack of access to health care services on the other.

BINGO. This is exactly it. The Planned Parenthood spokesperson in the article who pointed out that abstinence-only education has been a 1.5 billion dollar boondoggle also hits the nail on the head.

As for separating out age groups, a cursory look at data on the HPV study I'm working on doesn't show much separation between 14-16 and 17-19 year olds in terms of HPV infection. Keeping in mind that those 14-16 year olds in my particular study are of lower socioeconomic status than most of our 17-19 year olds, who are college students, my impression is that race and class have a lot more to do with infection rates than age, something the study shockingly brings out. 50% of African-American teenagers are infected with STIs vs. 20% of white teenagers? That's a disturbing statistic right there, especially its implications for how badly we've educated youth around sexuality.

Sex In The Public Square - sti - Comments

Age, race, class and HPV

>We know that