Addressing Sexually Transmitted Diseases Among Young People

Subject: Venereology
Pages: 2
Words: 621
Reading time:
3 min
Study level: College

The management of STD and HIV is a crucial part of promoting health among the members of the target population. Seeing that the percentage of young people that contract STD and HIV remains high not only I the United States but also all over the world, a comprehensive program that will help spread awareness about the problem, as well as encourage others to support people with HIV and STD, is required. The New York City STD/HIV Prevention Training Center (NYC STD/HIV PTC) program has been designed to address the issue on a global scale. However, there are several local agencies that have been succeeding in encouraging the target population to accept the suggested habits and reconsider their attitude toward people with HIV/STD. The program developed by the Texas Health and Human Services (2016), as well as the AIDS/HIV/STD Prevention Supplies program (Network of Care, 2015), serve as perfect tools for addressing the issue of HIV/STD awareness since they target not only patients but also general audience by using social media actively and reinforcing the idea of unity as the means of fighting both the disease and prejudices that surround it.

The program designed by the Texas Health and Human Services (2016) implies that the relevant services should be delivered to the residents of each city accordingly. The program encourages the citizens to use the tests designed by the organization members so that the issues associated with HIV/STD could be determined at the earliest stages of their development and managed appropriately. The artifacts of the program can be found at the following link. The developers must be credited for the idea of using social networks and other social media tools as the means of disseminating the essential data, such as the location of the testing facilities. The identified strategy helped attract a significant number of people and compel them to test for HIV/STD. One could argue, though, that the scope of the program could have gone beyond the promotion of testing and include building awareness as well.

The Network of Care, in its turn, offers a slightly different set of opportunities when reinforcing the effects of its program. It could be argued that the approach used by the organization is slightly more practical since it implies that a specific action should be taken to address the problem. Particularly, the program suggests all people that have or are going to have sexual experiences should take free condoms provided at the community distribution center (Network of Care, 2015). The artifacts of the program can be found at the following location. One must give the program members credit for taking a specific action and contributing to the development of healthy habits among the target population. Indeed, it is important to provide young people with a chance to protect themselves against HIV and STD. The use of social networks as the means of advertising the campaign is a rather successful idea. That being said, one may suggest that the program should also focus on the provision of the relevant information about HIV and STD.

The success of the agencies can be explained by the fact that they focus on both addressing the needs of people with HIV/STD and the promotion of awareness among the rest of the community members with the help of social media. As a result, the social stigma that HIV/STD patients bear in the contemporary society is removed gradually, and the target population receives increasingly strong support from the rest of the community members. Though working on a local level and not striving to invite the global community to the discussion, the programs developed by the specified agencies can be viewed as stellar examples of an STD/HIV management framework done right.

References

Network of Care. (2015). Mental/behavioral health. Web.

Texas Health and Human Services (2016). HIV and STD services in Texas. Web.