From the World AIDS Day Website:

World AIDS Day is celebrated on December 1 each year around the world. It has become one of the most recognised international health days and a key opportunity to raise awareness, commemorate those who have passed on, and celebrate victories such as increased access to treatment and prevention services.

UNAIDS took the lead on World AIDS Day campaigning from its creation until 2004. From 2004 onwards the World AIDS Campaign’s Global Steering Committee began selecting a theme for World AIDS Day in consultation with civil society, organisations and government agencies involved in the AIDS response.

Themes run for one or two years and are not just specific to World AIDS Day. Campaigning slogans such as ‘Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise’ have been used year round to hold governments accountable for their HIV and AIDS related commitment.

May 18th is HIV Vaccine Awareness Day (HVAD). This annual observance is a day to recognize and thank the thousands of volunteers, community members, health professionals, and scientists who are working together to find a safe and effective HIV vaccine. It is also a day to educate our communities about the importance of preventive HIV vaccine research.

In recognition of HIV Vaccine Awareness Day, community activities and media events are being held around the country.

Learn more about HIV Vaccine Awareness Day, events, and how to conduct activities in your community:

To learn more about HIV Vaccines, here’s a link to the NIAID Information Page:

World AIDS Day is held on December 1st of every year as an international day to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS.

On RHrealtiycheck.org, we found an interesting commentary by Dr. Will Wong, a board member of National Coalition of STD Directors (NCSD). Dr. Wong discusses how funding for STD prevention and treatment has been getting smaller and smaller.

So earlier this year NCSD set out to conduct a study on how the budget cuts were affecting the operation of programs that are designed to prevent, diagnose, and treat STDs. Our survey of states, large U.S. cities, and the territories is as equally sobering as the scale of the STD epidemic itself.

Our research found:

● 69 percent of STD programs experienced funding cuts from 2008 to 2009;

● 39 clinics supported by state and local STD programs closed due to lack of funding over the past year;

● 20 percent of the frontline STD program workforce – known as Disease Intervention Specialists – have disappeared over the past decade, and;

● 69 percent of STD programs supported by state and local dollars have experienced salary freezes and 29% have experiences layoffs.

In other words, the burden of STDs is becoming worse in this country at the same time that the resources we need to fight these illnesses continue to shrink. None of this bodes well for the future health of our nation and our communities.

It’s obvious there is a correlation between the growing STD problem and the dwindling funding. I wonder if the politicians are paying attention?

In 2008, there were more than 1.5 million total cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea reported to CDC — making them the two most commonly reported infectious diseases in the United States. Adolescent girls and young women are especially hard hit by these two diseases. The largest number of reported cases of both chlamydia and gonorrhea in 2008 was among girls between 15 and 19 years of age, followed closely by young women 20 to 24 years of age. This likely reflects a combination of factors, including biological differences that place females at greater risk for STDs than males, as well as higher STD screening rates among young women.

Syphilis — a disease once on the verge of elimination — began re-emerging as a public health threat in 2001. This is primarily because of a resurgence of the disease among men who have sex with men (MSM), though cases among women have also been increasing in recent years.
STDs and Infertility

Untreated STDs can lead to serious long-term health consequences, especially for adolescent girls and young women. CDC estimates that undiagnosed and untreated STDs cause at least 24,000 women in the United States each year to become infertile.3

Expanded access to STD prevention services, screening, and treatment is urgently needed to reduce the toll of STDs and protect the health of millions of Americans.
Racial Disparities

Racial minorities continue to face severe disparities across all three reportable STDs. While racial disparities persist overall, African-Americans, especially young African-American women, are the most heavily affected. Young African-American women face significantly higher rates of chlamydia and gonorrhea than any other group, while the highest rates of syphilis are among African-American men.

Link to PDF Factsheet

Washington, D.C., officials are planning to make testing for sexually transmitted infections available at all public high schools in the coming school year, adding D.C. to a growing list of cities that test students for STIs….

he new program requires all students to attend a lecture about STIs, after which they are escorted into restroom areas in groups of 15 to 20. They are then given paper bags with urine collection cups and go into the stalls, at which point they can decide whether to provide a sample. All students return the paper bags, regardless of whether they provided samples. Students give a password and can call a week later to receive their confidential results and, if necessary, treatment at the school or an STI clinic, which is paid for by the city. The district first offered the program two years ago at two charter schools, and eight high schools were included during the past school year.

Also from The Women’s Health Report, news from Boston:

Boston’s health agency on Tuesday is scheduled to launch a safer-sex campaign that reaches out to teenagers through Web sites such as Facebook and YouTube, the Boston Globe reports. The campaign was created in response to rising rates of sexually transmitted infections among young people in the city, according to the Globe. The $100,000 campaign originally was intended to address communicable diseases in general. However, experts noticed the increase in STI cases among teenagers and decided to spend all the funding on the campaign targeting STIs.

* About one-third of adolescents hadn’t received instruction on methods of birth control before age 18.
* In 2004, there were about 745,000 pregnancies among females younger than age 20. This included an estimated 16,000 pregnancies among girls aged 10 to 14.
* Syphilis cases among young people aged 15 to 24 have increased in both males and females in recent years.
* In 2006, about one million young people aged 10 to 24 were reported to have chlamydia, gonorrhea or syphilis. Nearly one-quarter of females aged 15 to 19, and 45 percent of females aged 20 to 24 had a human papillomavirus (HPV) infection during 2003-2004.
* From 1997 to 2006, rates of AIDS cases among males aged 15 to 24 increased.
* In 2006, the majority of new diagnoses of HIV infection among young people occurred among males and those aged 20 to 24.
* From 2004 to 2006, about 100,000 females aged 10 to 24 visited a hospital emergency department for nonfatal sexual assault, including 30,000 females aged 10 to 14.

More from PRNewswire.com:

* The HIV/AIDS epidemic is concentrated in approximately 20 percent of American counties (556 counties of the 3,027 counties for which data were provided to the National Minority Quality Forum).
* The HIV/AIDS epidemic is widespread among two-thirds of the predominantly minority counties (comprising African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders) for which data were provided to National Minority Quality Forum.
* Atlas users can view the epidemic in New York City at the zip code level. This vantage suggests that the disease clusters in small geographic areas in the United States.

Adult female sexual violence survivors are more likely than other women to engage in unsafe sex practices, including having multiple sex partners, not negotiating condom use, having sex with men who do not use condoms, trading sex for money/drugs, and having sex with an HIV-infected partner. Theorists propose that the links between sexual violence and unsafe sex behaviors are due to the trauma of sexual victimization; however, longitudinal research on this topic would help to illuminate ties between sexual violence and unsafe sex behaviors

Sexual Violence Against Women: Impact on High-Risk Health Behaviors and Reproductive Health