Distorted teen STD story spreads like a virus and provides a case study in communications

Nonprofit communicators have more than a passing interest in how social health stories are portrayed in the media. I was disappointed at the way the Associated Press story whipped up hysteria over STDs in girls. The article says 1 in 4 teen girls has a sexually transmitted disease.

Actually, variations on a "1 in 4" statistic have been around for many years, heavily promoted by organizations like Campaign for our Children (cfoc.org).

The new study is a first-of-its-kind from the Centers for Disease Control, and the articles about it neglected to provide much in the way of context. Are the numbers up from prior years? Doesn't say.

The biggest issue is the definition of "disease." The vast majority of the STDs making up the 1-in-4 statistic are HPV infections. Forty percent of the teenage girls reported having sex. Twenty six percent had sexually transmitted infections; 18% had HPV. Chlamydia, the second most common infection, was present in 4%. So this first-of-its-kind study tells us more about HPV infections than what we usually think of as STDs.

HPV is linked with some risk for cancer later in life. But most people who get infected with HPV never know it, because the virus goes away without causing any health problems. It is a very pervasive virus but usually causes no symptoms. “It is important to realize that most HPV infections clear on their own,” according to a summary of the study that the CDC provided to The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal article was the only article that provided any context on this issue.

I was also disappointed that the Associated Press article quoted people speculating that the STD rate is a sure sign that abstinence education has failed. First, the article doesn't say the rate has increased among teen girls; this is the first time HPV and other STDs have been lumped together this way, and the data are not compared with past years. Second, the people who link the STD rate to failure of abstinence education have no basis for that speculative theory, yet the AP reports it. And The Journal Gazette reiterated this baseless theory on its editorial page. Maybe abstinence education works, maybe it doesn't -- that's not my point; the point is that this article based on the CDC data does not support that theory at all, and yet it was used as a one-sided platform for activists to promote their agenda.

For example, the CDC also reports that the number of teens who have ever had sex has decreased, along with the number of teens who have had multiple partners and the number of teens currently sexually active -- all those categories of teens having sex are down from prior years. These figures -- also from the CDC, mind you -- the same source as the STD story -- would support the theory that abstinence education is working and that the new STD data reflect the new way various sexually transmitted infections were lumped together more than any other trend.

The lesson for nonprofit communicators is that activists with an agenda to discourage abstinence education were more effective in latching on to this news story than abstinence advocates. It's rare that you see a media story this distorted, and so this makes for a good case study in communications.