Age and Racial Disparities Persist for Gonorrhoea and Chlamydia in the United States
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31273/reinvention.v18i1.1754Keywords:
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs);, Sexual health, Gonorrhoea, Chlamydia, Risk factors, Adolescent sexual health, Ethnic disparities, Social determinants of health , prevalenceAbstract
Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) are primarily spread through sexual activity. In recent years, STIs have been on the rise globally. In the United States, chlamydia and gonorrhoea are the most prevalent bacterial STIs and have been for the past decade. Both these infections infect the same tissues, have similar modes of transmission, clinical presentations, and can be treated by the same antibiotics. Yet, the epidemiologies and forecasts appear to be different. This paper identifies vulnerable populations specific to gonorrhoea and chlamydia and assesses factors that are likely driving these disparities. Publicly available surveillance data from The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was examined to identify vulnerable populations for both diseases. These findings show that there are sex-specific differences in risk of gonorrhoea and chlamydia, and that young females carry an increased risk of both. Also, there is an increased risk of both infections among the Black/African American population. Understanding risk and risk-drivers is essential to targeting these vulnerable populations for the interest of public health.
References
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Amy Parnell
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing through any medium of communication those illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. Authors are also responsible for adding these permissions to the acknowledgement footnote that precedes all other notes or crediting the source and copyright of photographs or figures in the accompanying captions.
The journal's policy is to ask authors to grant us the licence to publish their work, which gives us the exclusive right both to reproduce and/or distribute their article (including the abstract) in printed, electronic or any other medium, and in turn to authorise others (including Reproduction Rights Organisations such as the Copyright Licensing Agency and the Copyright Clearance Center) to do the same. In return the author(s) assert their Moral Right to be identified as the author, and we promise that we will respect their rights as the author(s). That is, we will make sure that their name(s) is/are always clearly associated with the article and, while they do allow us to make necessary editorial changes, we will not make any substantial alteration to their article without consulting them.
Copyright remains with the author(s), however, the author(s) authorise us to act on their behalf to defend their copyright if anyone should infringe it, and to retain half of any damages awarded, after deducting our costs. The author(s) also retain the right to use their own article (provided they acknowledge the published original in standard bibliographic citation form) in the following ways, as long as they do not sell it or give it away in ways which would conflict directly with our interests. The author(s) is/are free to use their article for the internal educational or other purposes of their own institution or company; mounted on their own or their institution’s website; posted to free public servers of preprints and/or articles in their subject area; or in whole or in part, as the basis for their own further publications or spoken presentations.
If you have any queries about copyright please contact reinventionjournal@warwick.ac.uk
