Cold hard facts

• By CHANTE DIONNE WARREN
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: May 13, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:45 a.m.

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Between field trips to museums and art and music lessons, two summer enrichment camps will give teens and pre-teens a chance to discuss the rise in sexually transmitted diseases among their peers.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly half of all new STDs cases are among young people ages 15 to 24.

Southern University and the YWCA aim to educate young people about the consequences of engaging in premarital sexual activity.

“The proportion of teens that are infected with STDs is a scary thing,” said Riad Yehya, head of the Southern University Department of Sociology. “It scares me to death. It says to me how important my program is and other programs.”

Southern University’s Teen Prevention Pregnancy program focuses on abstinence for younger students, but includes a heavier component for high school teens that covers forms of protection, he said.

“We cannot put our head in the sand and believe if we tell them don’t do it that it will work,” Yehya said. “We tell them to wait, but at the same time, we tell them to protect themselves.”

The CDC released a report in March showing that in the United States one in four girls is infected with at least one of four of the most common sexually transmitted diseases which are human papillomavirus, chlamydia, herpes simplex virus and trichomoniasis.

That amounts to 3.2 million girls ages 14 to 19.

Chlamydia and gonorrhea, both bacterial infections with serious side effects, have the highest rates among Louisiana’s teen population ages 15 to 24, said Lisa Longfellow, director of the STD control program for the state Department of Health and Hospitals.

“Our teenagers are practicing risky behaviors,” Longfellow said.

Longfellow said teens are still largely undereducated about STDs. “I don’t think that teenagers have this information because we don’t really have a prevention component,” she said. “It’s up to the individual school boards in what they teach as far as comprehensive sex education.”

The Louisiana Department of Social Services has provided grants to fund the summer programs at the YWCA and Southern University. Other programs including the Governor’s Program on Abstinence have targeted schools and non profits to arm teens with information about STDs.

Southern University’s Teen Prevention Pregnancy program and the YWCA’s Positively kNOw! Programs are working to help deter teens from making poor choices about their sexuality by arming them with information, coordinators said. The programs teach about sexually transmitted diseases, encourage abstinence, and enhance students self esteem and problem solving skills, they said.