Health Beyond the Blog: Testing.com

As News Team member Adaora Ntukogu recently wrote about, the sexual health has changed in the COVID-19 era, including important resources being shifted away from attending to sexually transmitted infections and diseases (STIs/STDs) to assist with the pandemic. One consequence of this shift has resulted in a decrease of testing for STIs/STDs, including HIV.

Recently, a team of researchers and medical experts investigated the spread of STDs in Atlanta and the trends across the United States. They found that there are approximately 20 million new STD infections each year, with only 1 in 5 people knowing that they are infected. This is problematic as many people are unknowingly transmitting STDs to others in their community, as well as jeopardizing their own health. While this information is not specific to the pandemic, it is reasonable to assume that this situation is worsened in the pandemic.

Thus, this team created Testing.com in order to attend to what they saw as a double need: education and accessibility. They created a comprehensive resource featuring a directory of local non-profit organizations in a range of cities and access to at home testing. For example, the Atlanta list includes 58 testing sites. This resource is critical in a time of reduced capacity for sexual health education and access.