By Blythe Bernhard
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS - You’d have to drink 10 gallons of saliva, all at once, to contract HIV from an infected kissing partner. That’s one lesson Kamina Ballard taught a group of 20 teenagers Tuesday at the St. Louis City Juvenile Detention Center.
“Realistically, we don’t kiss that much,” she told the 14- and 15-year-olds.
Ballard and other city public health educators spend every Tuesday afternoon dispelling myths and offering information about sexually transmitted diseases for youth in the correctional facility.
It’s all part of the city health department’s push to reduce the number of STDs, particularly among young adults, who are most at-risk. The city recently scored the highest rates in the country for gonorrhea and chlamydia, with nearly two-thirds of cases coming from people between the ages of 12 and 24.
The public health educators say that part of the problem with getting the message across to teenagers is their sense of invincibility.
So Ballard asks the class to repeat the four bodily fluids that can readily transmit the virus: semen, vaginal fluid, blood and breast milk. She tells them that just because a person looks clean doesn’t mean they are clean. That oral sex is sex. And anybody who is sexually active can get a sexually transmitted disease.
Perhaps the most effective tactic is a slide show of graphic photos of STDs that cause the teenagers to gasp and cringe.
“When I leave here I’ll talk to my mom about it and try to explain it to my brother and sister,” one 14-year-old boy said.
After the weekly classes, anyone who wants to can get tested for syphilis or HIV. This week, seven of the boys volunteered. They are all automatically tested for chlamydia and gonorrhea when they enter the facility.
The health department’s education and testing program at the youth correctional facility started in March, and so far more than 60 teenagers have been tested for HIV and syphilis. None has tested positive.
Those are the kind of results the health department hoped for when they asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to send a representative to help tackle the adolescent and young adult STD situation.
“We have, like the rest of the nation, some challenges in the number of cases among youth between the ages of 12 and 24,” said Pamela Walker, the city health department’s acting director. “We felt we needed a young fresh face to be communicating with that population and interacting with the kids in a way they can relate to and feel comfortable with.”
The CDC agreed, and sent public health prevention specialist Brandii Mayes, 27, in October of 2006. Her salary is paid by the CDC, and the health department provides her office space.
She is assigned to work in St. Louis for two years, collaborating on STD prevention plans with other agencies, talking to students at high schools and organizing a first-ever workshop for teens and parents to be held Saturday.
“Teenagers are exciting to me - they’re at that point where they’re making a lot of decisions,” Mayes said. “Teenagers talk in the bathroom, on the phone. The information may or may not be accurate.”
Mayes wants to give young adults the information they need to make the best decisions, whether or not they’re having sex.
“I think it’s OK to say you don’t have to have sex,” she said. “I have found that that side of the fence is so stress-free.”
The public health care workers hear a lot about the high rates of STDs in St. Louis. The increase in disease rates can be partly attributed to an increase in screenings. The high numbers also have had a positive impact, they point out, by starting a dialogue on the topic among families.
Despite the ranking, Mayes doesn’t think STDs are a bigger problem here than in other major cities. Whatever the numbers are, they’re too high, she said.
“When you get into comparing who’s better, who’s worse, you lose sight of the issue,” she said. “There are people that are having unprotected sex. Numbers are numbers, but you’re dealing with people’s lives.”
Copyright 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch