aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
1 in 4 teenage girls has STD: Study
One in 4 teenage girls in the United States has at least one sexually transmitted disease, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The trend is even worse among African-American girls: Nearly half have one or more STDs, compared with 20 percent of whites.
Human papillomavirus was the most common of the four diseases included in the study, affecting 18 percent of the girls studied. Chlamydia was a distant second at 4 percent, followed by trichomoniasis and genital herpes.
The data is based on a nationally representative sample of 838 young women who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in 2003 and 2004.
Teen health experts say the study, billed as the first to look at common STD rates among young girls, highlights the need for comprehensive sex education that goes beyond the abstinence-only message pushed by the federal government.
Emphasis mine.
