Addressing The Sexually Transmitted Infections Epidemic In The United States A Sociomedical Perspective

Rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have significantly increased in the United States. Per-capita estimates reveal approximately 68 million prevalent and 26 million incident STIs nationally. Gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia—the three reportable STIs—reached levels not seen in the last fifty years and this resurgence is concurrent with increasing antimicrobial resistance and a dearth of viable candidates in the vaccine pipeline. A seminal report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Sexually Transmitted Infections: Adopting a Sexual Health Paradigm, confirms that STIs rank among the most pressing and intractable public health threats. Furthermore, rising rates of STIs exact a substantial societal, medical, and economic burden that strain public health capacity, which has been substantially debilitated in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. STIs can have serious consequences for sexual, reproductive, and overall health. Untreated syphilis, for instance, is directly implicated in neurological, cardiovascular, and dermatological disease. Human papillomavirus is a known cause of cervical cancer and is the most common cancer among women globally. Hepatitis B increases risk for cirrhosis and primary liver cancer. Despite reductions in HIV transmission and improvements in prevention and treatment, infections among women, girls, adolescents, and mother-to-child transmission remain unacceptably high. Marginalized racial/ethnic minorities, LGBTQ persons, vulnerable at-risk adolescents and young adults, and other underrepresented populations are more susceptible to STIs as they negotiate an array of factors that can delay and even preclude access to preventive interventions. The United States spends substantially more on STI prevention and treatment yet it consistently bares a disproportionate burden of sexually transmitted infections compared to other Western industrialized nations. Access to healthcare, erosion and diversion of public health capacity, racism, discrimination, stigma, substandard education, and poverty have all been identified as important contributors to the trajectory of acute sexually transmitted infections. Furthermore, upstream drivers such as national, state, and local public health policies have been associated with population-level STI risk, prevention, and treatment and as such offer opportunities for ecological, observational, and multi-level analyses to assess their direct and indirect impact on sexual health outcomes. In this thematic collection, we aim to present an interdisciplinary collection of high-quality articles centered on the premise that the rise of emerging and re-emerging STIs can be attributed, in part, to a complex interaction of sociomedical factors beyond individual behavioral risk profiles. This Research Topic welcomes a variety of manuscript formats including original research, brief reports, systematic reviews, and perspective manuscripts involving sociomedical factors, social determinants of health, health disparities, infectious disease epidemiology, and other drivers including health policies that act as barriers and facilitators of effective STI prevention and treatment. Manuscripts that examine structural, community, institutional, interpersonal, and broad individual factors linked to STIs are very well suited for this collection. Topic areas include, but are not limited to: • Structural racism, discrimination, and stigma and their influence on prevention, treatment, and support services among vulnerable and marginalized populations; • Housing and income insecurity that impede sexual, reproductive, and overall health; • Biological factors that affect the spread of STIs including their asymptomatic nature and the influence of sex as a biological variable; • Intimate partner violence, harassment, and intimidation; • Substance abuse, sex work, sexual networks, and normative sexual attitudes and beliefs that impede the adoption of preventive health-promoting behaviors; • Priority populations including adolescents, men who have sex with men, youth who are LGBTQ, and the incarcerated; • Impact of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) uptake on STI incidence; • Culturally-specific biopsychosocial, behavioral, and community-based STI interventions to treat and support those afflicted with STIs; • Community mobilization and community-based organization to reduce STIs; • Community-level prevalence of infectious agents; • Local and holistically-integrated STI clinics; • Public health STI workforce capacity; • Health in All Policies (HiAP) approaches to STI prevention and treatment. Christopher Williams is the Senior Vice President and Director of Research at National Health Promotion Associates, a private research and development firm that specializes in the development, testing and dissemination of evidence-based approaches to target behavioral risk factors associated with major chronic diseases, violence, accidents and preventable injuries. The other Topic Editors declare no competing interests with regard to the Research Topic subject.

Protecting and promoting health is inherently a political endeavor that requires a sophisticated understanding of the distribution and use of power. Yet while the global nature of health is widely recognized, its political nature is less well understood. In recent decades, the interdisciplinary field of global health politics has emerged to demonstrate the interconnections of health and core political topics, including foreign and security policy, trade, economics, and development. Today a growing body of scholarship examines how the global health landscape has both shaped and been shaped by political actors and structures. The Oxford Handbook of Global Health Politics provides an authoritative overview and assessment of research on this important and complicated subject. The volume is motivated by two arguments. First, health is not simply a technical subject, requiring evidence-based solutions to real-world problems, but an arena of political contestation where norms, values, and interests also compete and collide. Second, globalization has fundamentally changed the nature of health politics in terms of the ideas, interests, and institutions involved. The volume comprises more than 30 chapters by leading experts in global health and politics. Each chaper provides an overview of the state of the art on a given theoretical perspective, major actor, or global health issue. The Handbook offers both an excellent introduction to scholars new to the field and also an invaluable teaching and research resource for experts seeking to understand global health politics and its future directions.

Multidisciplinary collection of essays on the relationship of infertility and the "historic" STIS--gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis--producing surprising new insights in studies from across the globe and spanning millennia.

A global economic analysis of HIV infection amongst sex workers, finding that evidence based and rights affirming interventions are not implemented to the level that their efficacy warrants, and that doing so at scale would be cost effective and deliver significant returns on investment.

The New Public Health has established itself as a solid textbook throughout the world. Translated into 7 languages, this work distinguishes itself from other public health textbooks, which are either highly locally oriented or, if international, lack the specificity of local issues relevant to students' understanding of applied public health in their own setting. This 3e provides a unified approach to public health appropriate for all masters' level students and practitioners—specifically for courses in MPH programs, community health and preventive medicine programs, community health education programs, and community health nursing programs, as well as programs for other medical professionals such as pharmacy, physiotherapy, and other public health courses. Changes in infectious and chronic disease epidemiology including vaccines, health promotion, human resources for health and health technology Lessons from H1N1, pandemic threats, disease eradication, nutritional health Trends of health systems and reforms and consequences of current economic crisis for health Public health law, ethics, scientific d health technology advances and assessment Global Health environment, Millennium Development Goals and international NGOs

"This is a very good text for undergraduate students as it gives a broad overview of the concept of public health, utilising case studies to illustrate practical application. This book would be also be an excellent way for practitioners to increase their own knowledge of public health and could inform their own continuing professional development." Julie Lemprière, University of Gloucestershire Key Concepts in Public Health identifies fifty key concepts used across the discipline of public health in order to give the reader a broad perspective of the core topics relevant to training and practice. From epidemiology to health promotion, and ethics to leadership, the book offers an exciting guide to the multiprofessional field. Each entry features: - a snapshot definition of the concept - a broader discussion addressing the main issues and links to practice - key points relevant to the entry - case studies to illustrate the application to practice - examples of further reading. Highly readable, with clear indexing and cross referencing, this is an ideal book to turn to for learning more about key issues in public health practice and education. The clever structure means the book can be read in its entirety to support a programme of study or readers can use it to dip into and update their knowledge of a particular concept. It meets the validation requirements of all allied health and nursing training programmes and will also be invaluable for policy-makers and healthcare practitioners continuing their professional education.

At a time when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals--often referred to under the umbrella acronym LGBT--are becoming more visible in society and more socially acknowledged, clinicians and researchers are faced with incomplete information about their health status. While LGBT populations often are combined as a single entity for research and advocacy purposes, each is a distinct population group with its own specific health needs. Furthermore, the experiences of LGBT individuals are not uniform and are shaped by factors of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographical location, and age, any of which can have an effect on health-related concerns and needs. The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People assesses the state of science on the health status of LGBT populations, identifies research gaps and opportunities, and outlines a research agenda for the National Institute of Health. The report examines the health status of these populations in three life stages: childhood and adolescence, early/middle adulthood, and later adulthood. At each life stage, the committee studied mental health, physical health, risks and protective factors, health services, and contextual influences. To advance understanding of the health needs of all LGBT individuals, the report finds that researchers need more data about the demographics of these populations, improved methods for collecting and analyzing data, and an increased participation of sexual and gender minorities in research. The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People is a valuable resource for policymakers, federal agencies including the National Institute of Health (NIH), LGBT advocacy groups, clinicians, and service providers.