STI is up to Spreading Awareness about STD among Teens

A new study has shown teenage boys are considerably less likely than girls to take responsibility for preventing the spread of sexually transmitted infections.
Published in the Journal Midwifery, the most shocking aspect of the research was that teenage boys often said that they did not plan to follow the advice given to them in their sexual education classes and furthermore didn’t think sex education had any impact on their sexual behaviour.
Sweden has been particularly eager to improve its sexual education as its rates of chlamydia infection have been steadily rising. While 1997 saw less than 14,000 people take a positive chlamydia test, in 2007 the number of people positive after chlamydia screening had risen to 47,000.
Health experts are unsure what has caused the increase in infection rates but believe it is linked to people have more sexual partners, an increase in the number of one-night stands and casual relationships and a reduced use of condoms.
The scientists who performed the study asked almost 500 high school students aged 17 to fill in an anonymous questionnaire. All had taken part in classes covering topics like condom use, Swedish law regarding sexually transmitted infections, and responsibility. However despite the lessons the boys seemed to be ignoring the messages their teachers were trying to pass on.
It was also shown that girls were more likely to have had sex, as well as being more likely to have had a chlamydia test. They were also more afraid of pregnancy than the boys, though they had less experience using condoms.
The findings seem to echo trends in the UK, where health officials have struggled to get the ‘safe sex’ message through to young men. They have been particularly keen to encourage regular sexual health check-ups, sending home STD tests to their houses and offering incentives if they take part in chlamydia screening, but they are still the least likely group to take a chlamydia test.
When home STD tests were developed it was hoped that they might go some way to overcoming the embarrassment that many name as a key reason for ignorance and poor sexual health, but in the UK chlamydia rates have continued to climb.
The government has just announced plans which will see children get some form of sex education from the age of 5 and are making sex education compulsory from the age of 15, meaning that everyone will get at least one year’s education before they can legally leave school. At the moment faith schools can opt out of sex education entirely.
The lead researcher on the study, midwife Gun Rembeck, said, “We need to use other methods to reach boys and perhaps develop our partnerships with other professional groups who work with young people."We need to develop gender-based methods which reach out to boys as well as girls. The methods we use need to be scientifically evaluated and quality-assured. Multisensory learning, a method tried out on younger age groups, may also be suitable for high-school students, as well as working on the basis of the scientific knowledge there is of different teaching styles."