Last October, the Student Health Center received a $20,000 grant from the Cape Fear Memorial Foundation, which has enabled them to offer free HIV and chlamydia screening for students since Jan. 1.

“We are really looking to highlight the testing for asymptomatic individuals, and these two tests, the urine chlamydia test and the blood HIV test, we feel are the two most important tests for people who don’t have symptoms,” Medical Director Dr. Peter Meyer said.

HIV and chlamydia can remain asymptomatic for years leading to chronic pelvic pain, infertility and death. Chlamydia is the most prevalent Sexually Transmitted Disease reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 1994.

Although 15-24 year-olds constitute 25 percent of the sexually active population, recent estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest the age group contracts 50 percent of reported STDs.

According to the CDC, “The higher prevalence of STDs among adolescents also reflects multiple barriers to quality STD prevention services, including lack of insurance or other ability to pay, lack of transportation, discomfort with facilities and services designed for adults and concerns about confidentiality.”

This grant is the latest in what has been nearly three years of efforts on the part of the Student Health Center to improve its official capacities in various areas of sexual health services. However, it is the first grant requested for outside funds to help student care, according to Adult Nurse Practioner, Mary Canel.

“It’s kind of a new focus for our department to try to do a little more outreach in that area,” said Canel.

Meyer and Canel were the two involved in the painstaking process of securing the grant for UNCW’s Student Health Center, which they hope will continue to increase student utilization of the center’s STD testing services.

In March of 2004, the SHC received a grant of $1,450 from Friends of UNCW, a volunteer organization, to launch an HIV testing program after lack of funding prevented the Health Department from coming to UNCW for student screenings.

Another grant from Friends of UNCW in 2005 enabled the SHC to switch their method of chlamydia testing and to lower the costs incurred by students. According to Canel, the SHC has “seen a great increase in males seeking testing. We used to do a probe that had to be inserted in the urethra for males-and so what was happening was that males were sending their female partners in for testing [instead of getting tested themselves],” she said.

In addition to financial barriers, concerns about confidentiality and the need for strict adherence to a plethora of state and federal regulations interfered with the SHC’s desire to offer students on-campus testing services.

Although all positive results for STDs including syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea and HIV must be reported to the Health Department, the SHC has made student privacy and confidentiality a top priority. Health records are kept separate from all other student records.

“HIV is really the only one where there is extensive legislation,” Meyer said. According to the law the Student Health Center must notify the health department, council the person and make sure their partner is informed of the positive test result.

According to Meyer, failure to detect STDs early can have “very devastating results from infertility to death, which is why we are doing this. If you are going to be sexually active, take responsibility and get tested. We want to offer that service to students and to encourage students to come in and to talk to their partner about this,” he said.

According to Canel, regular screenings for sexually active persons is about “more than looking at the student as an individual, but in how their behavior or the way students educate themselves about risk impacts the community locally, nationally, internationally. College students all over the world are very mobile and very bright and really do impact our future, and it is a nice way to impact your environs positively.”