Find the NCC on Facebook!

The National Chlamydia Coalition is now on Facebook. To follow the NCC, simply visit our page and click the "like" button. Don't forget to share it with your friends and colleagues!

April is National STD Awareness Month, so get ready to promote GYT! Visit the GYT Online Toolkit to download, print, or order new and free GYT materials to help organize and encourage STD testing in your clinic or community.  

The GYT website now offers additional resources to help providers better serve their teen and young adult patients. The site features quick STD reference charts, resources for talking to patients about sexual history and STD testing, training resources, and materials to help promote GYT in health centers and clinics. Check out PROVIDER.GYTNOW.org to learn more.

Just in time for National STD Awareness Month, the Chlamydia Resource Exchange (CRE), developed by the National Chlamydia Coalition's Public Awareness Committee, has officially launched! The CRE is a free web-based resource library providing centralized access to multi-media public awareness and education materials on sexual health issues, including chlamydia, HIV/AIDS, and other STDs.  All of the materials can be downloaded and tailored to meet your own organization's needs.

Please also visit the CRE to share your organization's sexual health resources, including posters, brochures, videos, fact sheets, online applications, podcasts, and more. The upload process is quick and simple. We encourage you to share the availability of this great new resource with all your colleagues, partners and members. Check it out at: www.ChlamydiaResourceExchange.org.

James G. Hodge, Jr., JD, LLM discusses the status of state EPT laws, impediments to full implementation, and healthcare providers' concerns in a podcast. Hodge led the team that developed the toolkit for states, Legal and Policy Issues and Resources Related to Implementation of Expedited Partner Therapy (EPT).

The Council of State Governments (CSG) and Partnership for Prevention are collaborating to provide information to state legislators on preventing HIV/AIDS, other STDs, and teen pregnancy. One product of this collaboration is a new fact sheet, Health Reform Coverage for Prevention: Sexual Health Services, which was recently posted on CSG's online Knowledge Center. 

According to a National Center for Health Statistics survey, the proportion of people aged 15-24 who say they have never had a sexual encounter has increased.Of about 5,000 respondents, 27% of men and 29% of women aged 15-24 reported that they had never had sexual contact with another person - anal, oral, or vaginal. That's up from 22% for both genders in 2002.

Among teens aged 15-17, 58% of girls and 53% of boys reported no sexual contact, compared with 49% of girls and 46% of boys in the 2002 survey. 12% of women and 13% of men aged 20-24 said they had never had any sexual contact, a jump from 8% for both sexes in the previous survey. However, the survey did find an increase in chlamydia infection among 15- to 19-year-olds.

Reduction in unnecessary chlamydia screening among older women at Title X funded family planning sites following a structural intervention - San Francisco, 2009

In this study, Bernstein et al. report on a structural intervention aimed at reducing chlamydia screening among women aged ≥26 years. This brief paper provides an important example of a relatively simple, low cost structural intervention that made an impact. For the full summary, click here.

This clinical care resource, issued by the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, highlights changes in the 2010 STD Treatment Guidelines that are important for clinicians who care for adolescents.

The National Alliance to Advance Adolescent Health interviewed 31 clinical and policy experts about their views on future directions for the federal Office of Adolescent Health (OAH). The full summary is available on the National Alliance website.