STD testing made easy.

A Web-based program designed to facilitate self-administered chlamydia screening among women aged 14 and older received overwhelmingly favorable reviews from women who used it between July 2004 and January 2005. (1) visitors to the Web site, which was advertised to Maryland women in flyers and radio advertisements, were offered free screening kits that included a sterile swab, instructions for swabbing the vagina, contact information, consent forms, a questionnaire and a postage-paid return mailer. (Testing and, if necessary, treatment also were free of charge.) A total of 1254 kits were requested; nine in 10 requests were made via e-mail, and the rest by phone or in person at participating pharmacies or community sites. Some 400 kits were mailed in for testing, and 10% contained samples that were chlamydia-positive. Nine in 10 women who mailed in kits said that they would like to collect their own sample, and the same proportion considered self-administered screening safe. Nearly all considered the procedure very easy (65%) or easy (26%), and none found it very difficult: 86% would use this method again. The preferred means for obtaining the kit was through the mail (reported by 73% of women). The investigators note that a Web-based program may have particular appeal to adolescents, for whom confidentiality concerns and costs are often barriers to care.

(1.) Gaydos CA et al., Internet-based screening for Chlamydia trachomatis to reach nonclinic populations with marled sell administered vaginal swabs, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 2006. 33(7):451-437.

FYI is compiled and written by Dore Hollander; executive editor of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.