How to stop the spread of STDs

Professor James Moody of Ohio State University recently completed a fascinating study, mapping the romantic and sexual relationships of students at a high school over the course of 18 months. Although there were not many students who had many partners,

The romantic and sexual network at the school created long chains of connections that spread out through the community, with few places where students directly shared the same partners with each other. But they were indirectly linked, partner to partner to partner. One component of the network linked 288 students – more than half of those who were romantically active at the school – in one long chain. (See figure for a representation of the network.)

Granted, to be in the chain, sexual intercourse is not required. Nevertheless, this has profound implications in regard to the spread of STDs. Because students often think that they are acting non-promiscuously by only having one or two partners over eighteen months, they underestimate their potential risk for getting STDs. Because if those one or two partners happened to be linked in a long chain of people, and one of those people happens to have an STD, there is a real chance that a “non-promiscuous” student could end up with an STD.

This study shows that adolescents tend to differ from adults, where there are “cores of sexually active people who are the main conduits of disease.” Because of this, rather than targeting a select group, the focus to stop the spread of STDs amongst adolescents must be on broad-based interventions, according to Moody.

I think this is a really interesting study. However, in my opinion, it’s going to be much more difficult to come up with a solution than to map out these sexual networks. Most adolescents, realistically, are going to have romantic relationships with many people, and some of those relationships are going to be sexual. I don’t see this fact changing anytime soon.