Remembering Julius "Julie" Schachter | |
| | STDPO News: on January 07, 2021 at 03:56:13 PM |
Dual Treatment for Gonorrhea No Longer Recommended | |
| | STDPO News: on December 18, 2020 at 12:18:27 PM | 
Dear Colleagues,
CDC has updated its recommendation for the treatment of uncomplicated gonorrhea in adults. Gonorrhea should now be treated with just one higher dose (500 mg) injection of ceftriaxone, and dual therapy is no longer the recommended approach. The new recommendations, briefly summarized below, are available in 2020 Update to CDC's Treatment for Gonococcal Infections, a special policy note published on December 17 in MMWR, and this new recommendation supersedes the gonorrhea treatment recommendation included in the 2015 STD Treatment Recommendations.
- Treat gonorrhea infections with a single 500 mg injection of ceftriaxone.
- A test-of-cure is not needed for people who receive a diagnosis of uncomplicated urogenital or rectal gonorrhea unless symptoms persist.
- A test-of-cure is recommended in people with pharyngeal gonorrhea 7-14 days after the initial treatment, regardless of the regimen.
- Patients who have been treated for gonorrhea should be retested three months after treatment to ensure there is no reinfection.
- As always, facilitate partner testing and treatment.
Drug-resistant gonorrhea remains an urgent public health threat; in fact, half of all gonorrhea infections are resistant to at least one antibiotic.
The change
View Full | | | | ASTDA Position Statements | |
| | STDPO News: on November 06, 2020 at 02:03:37 PM |
Over the past year, the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association (ASTDA) has started a new initiative: the development of position statements. Through these statements, ASTDA is leveraging its standing in the STI community in the U.S. as a bully pulpit to support expert clinical opinion and to advance STI prevention and control policy. Both are very important at this point. First, the CDC STI treatment guidelines will be released within the next few months. As much as the guidelines are evidence-based, there are many instances where such evidence does not exist or is not conclusive, resulting in numerous “gray” areas where the guidelines rely on “expert opinion”. ASTDA considering these gray areas, channeling the extensive experience of its membership, will bolster expert opinion and could constitute a very important addendum to the guidelines. In terms of policy development, ASTDA’s position statements can also be powerful. In fact, the first ASTDA policy statement released last August, is a strong endorsement for publicly-funded STI clinics – very important in times of dwindling resources and increasing stresses to the STI clinical system due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Importantly, there are a number of policy reports that have been published this year, commissioned by the National Coalition of STD Directors: two reports by the National Academy of Policy Administration (NAPA)1, 2 and one by the Treatment Action Group.3 In addition, there are two reports anticipated to be released within the next 6-9 months: The STI National Strategic Plan coming from the Department of Health and Human Services in collaboration with federal and state partners4 and a report from the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.5 These reports need careful consideration and explicit endorsement by ASTDA.
1. &
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| | | STDPO News: on October 09, 2019 at 01:11:12 PM | 
August 21, 2019
Greetings ASTDA Members!
It has been a year since I took office as President and there are many important things going on with ASTDA that I want to share with you. As you are no doubt aware, there have been many changes in our working environment over the past year some of which are positive (e.g. additional funding support as a result of the End HIV Initiative) and some of which are not (e.g. increasing numbers of state laws that are harmful to women’s sexual & reproductive health). It is with attention to this context that our Association has developed a Mission Statement, revised our Objectives and clarified our core values in terms of commitments that we as an association can make to the field. I share them with you here and encourage you to go to the website www.ASTDA.org (if you are not already reading this on the website!)
ASTDA’s Mission is to foster scientific knowledge, develop leadership and champion practice in the field of sexually transmitted infections.
ASTDA’s Objectives are to:
To control, prevent, and ultimately eradicate sexually transmitted infections (STI)
To support research in all aspects of STI including medical, epidemiologic, laboratory, social and behavioral studies
To recognize outstanding contributions in STI control and prevention
To disseminate authoritative information concerning STI
To develop the current and future generations of STI professionals
| Words Matter: From the ASTDA President | |
| | STDPO News: on December 20, 2017 at 04:49:57 PM | 
The words purportedly banned last week from the budget processes affecting the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention are ones that should capture the attention of every ASTDA member.* Yesterday, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald - CDC Director - issued a statement noting CDC's ongoing commitment "...to our public health mission as a science- and evidence-based institution."
Words matter, but the protection of an institution committed to public health as a human right and based in social justice must be enacted as well as spoken, and CDC cannot stand alone in this commitment. This year has seen a steady abrogation of gender, sexual, and reproductive health services available to the full diversity of the peoples of the United States. In many instances, this suppression of public health is accompanied by a rhetoric of violence - implied and explicit - that leaves little to the imagination of worse to come. It is increasingly clear that inaction is a form of complicity with a willful public health disaster.
See the full letter below:
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| | | STDPO News: on November 01, 2017 at 06:56:12 PM | |
A Word From the Editor
STDPO at 10
Ten years ago today, we launched STD Prevention Online
(STDPO): a networking site for STD professionals that aimed to form a web-based
bridge between the different disciplines that comprise the STD workforce: basic
scientists, epidemiologists, clinicians, disease intervention specialists, and
other public health workers.
The site was initially developed by the Denver Public Health
Department and Adelson Consulting, funded by a grant from the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention. After the grant ended in 2009, the site was financially
supported by the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association (ASTDA)
until 2012. Currently, STDPO is maintained
by Rietmeijer Consulting with in-kind contributions from ASTDA and the American
Sexual Health Association (ASHA). Specifically, I like to mention Zoltan
Borsodi, ASHA’s webmaster who has been very helpful in trouble-shooting the
site over the past few years.
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| | | STDPO News: on April 21, 2017 at 03:58:52 PM | 
The new American administration led by Donald Trump and Michael Pence promises changes likely detrimental to the public health infrastructure addressing sexually transmitted diseases, and to the funding streams that support research on prevention, treatment, and education. Rollback of expanded health access, insecurity among immigrant populations, loss of legal protections for sexual and gender minorities, and aggressive restrictions on sexual/reproductive health services are just the most general areas that affect STD at the intersections of public health, science, and clinical services. Some states will mirror policies endorsed at the Federal level. However, some states may maintain or even expand programs related to STD and other sexual/reproductive health services. This will create havens of safety for residents of those states but exacerbate regional health inequities that are long-standing attributes of STD in the United States.
The challenges to the ASTDA mission brought by the broad political changes in the United States means that our organization can ill afford passivity and silence. In the short term, we will be working to increase the engagement of our membership in the state and federal issues that affect the ASTDA mission. We are already signing on to advocacy letters to Congress and other administration officials. We are enhancing partnerships with organizations such as the American Sexual Health Association and the National Coalition of STD Directors. These partnerships can multiply the reach and effectiveness of our efforts. We have expanded ASTDA’s regional perspective to include a member of IUSTI Canada on our Executive Committee, and have extended our global commitment through greater engagement in IUSTI. After all, the repeated lessons of global HIV, gonococcal resistance, and zika (among many others) teach us that walls or national boundaries are ineffective barriers to STD.
In the longer term, ASTDA will work toward more effective use of its extensive scientific and clinical expertise in defense of critical public health, research, and clinical infrastructure. We will also seek opportunities for
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| Position Announcement: Medical Director of Detroit Public Health STD/HIV Control Program | |
| | STDPO News: on March 10, 2015 at 12:44:59 PM | |
Robertson family patriarch takes the familiar and all too easy approach of
blaming STDs on immorality. Here’s why Phil’s wrong.
A colleague shared an MSNBC
article about a CNS
News story where Duck Dynasty
patriarch Phil Robertson weighs in on what he sees as the root cause driving
sexually transmitted diseases: a lack of biblically-correct
sex!
Let’s simply allow the man to lay it all out for you, er,
that is to put it in his own words. Referring to an STD-free, monogamous
heterosexual couple he opined
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