Increase in STIs leads to community discussion

Community leaders are gathering to discuss sex education in light of reports that sexually transmitted infections in Monroe County teens have increased drastically.

The Centers for Disease Control released a report this summer that details the increases in STIs among 15- to 19-year-olds. Gonorrhea increased by 200 percent among 15- to 19-year-old males, according to the report.

The League of Women Voters learned of the increased incidences of sexually transmitted infections from a report released by the CDC. The league decided it was an issue that needed to be discussed, said Albrecht Holschuh, second vice president of the organization.

“All the age ranges raised, but the teens’ rates astonished a lot of people,” said Larisa Niles-Carnes, Bloomington educator for Planned Parenthood of Indiana.

The League will hold a panel presentation and discussion at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Monroe County Public Library auditorium. Six panelists will speak and answer questions: Niles-Carnes; Penny Caudill, administrator of the Monroe County Health Department; Shelia Evans, administrator of the community health education program at Bloomington Hospital; Brian Rosenburgh, physical education and health teacher at Edgewood High School; Jennifer Staab, Healthy Schools coordinator for Monroe County Community School Corporation; and one student.

The event will last about 90 minutes, but 30 minutes will be spent discussing sex education in schools, Holschuh said. Audience members will be able to submit questions to the panel on index cards.

While there have been several opportunities for parents to attend the how-to sessions throughout the school year in the past few years, attendance is not always strong, Caudill said.

“The ones I went to didn’t have a lot of participation,” she said. “One class had many parents, and two I went to had none.”

Getting parents to discuss sex with their children is essential in Monroe County, Niles-Carnes said.

“Comprehensive sex education should be taught in schools,” she said. “Government funding only provides funding for abstinence-only education. MCCSC teaches abstinence-plus, which addresses birth control and how to prevent STIs, but it’s limited on everything they can talk about in the classroom.”

If comprehensive sex education is taught in schools, some parents’ squeamishness about talking sex with their children could be avoided because it will have been discussed at school, Niles-Carnes said. However, it would still be important for parents to talk with their children about these issues, she added.

Another challenge for health educators like Caudill is interpreting the information released by the CDC.

“We’re not sure whether the amount of STIs are increased or whether we’re just discovering more,” she explained.

It is likely that many more young people are getting tested for STIs since 1996, because testing itself has become simpler, Niles-Carnes said. Some STI tests can be completed with a urine sample, she said.

“I hope more people are getting tested,” she said. “When I do education sessions, I push that people get tested.”

While Caudill and other panelists hope the meeting will serve to raise awareness and discourse about STIs and sex education in the community, Caudill said there’s no easy answer to what it will take to lower the rates of infection among the county’s teens.

“We hope it will help parents and families have the conversations they need to get the problems they have addressed,” she said.