April is STD Awareness Month!

April is STD Awareness Month and the South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (SC Campaign) has created resources to help increase awareness across the state. In addition to our ongoing outreach and training efforts, publications like this help youth-serving professionals and other trusted adults understand the issue and how to help adolescents make healthier choices about love, relationships and sex.

Organizations across the U.S. use this month as an opportunity to educate about and promote best practices for STD/STI prevention. The fact is, there are 20 million new STD/STI cases in the U.S. every year and the medical costs for these new cases are upwards of $16 billion. Half of all new STD/STI cases in the U.S. are in people between the ages 15-24 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 2017). Many STD/STIs can be prevented by wearing a condom, so we are working to prevent the further spread of them by helping youth-serving professional improve education on and access to contraception and condoms.

More than 25 years of training and support for professionals has allowed us to effectively address, not just pregnancy, but also adolescent reproductive and sexual health. Moving forward, we want to continue highlighting the importance of adolescent-friendly health care services, evidence-based approaches to education and our ongoing commitment to keeping adolescents healthy.

For more information, contact communications@teenpregnancysc.org.