"I got diagnosed with an STD since we played"

A new Internet-based public health program in San Francisco allows gay men with STDs to anonymously inform their partners via e-mail.

By Lynn Harris

  • Pages 1 2 3

Jan 3, 2005 | Imagine you receive an anonymous Internet greeting card whose first line reads:

"You're too hot ..."

(Hey, thanks! you think, admiring the accompanying graphic of a towel-clad male torso.)

"... to be out of action."

(Wait, what?)

"I got diagnosed with an STD since we played."

(Whoa.)

"You might want to get checked, too."

(... Uh, yeah.)

You follow the link on the card to inSPOT.org, Internet Notification Service for Partners or Tricks. ("Tricks" is slang for sexual partners who are casual but not necessarily paying.) From there, you can find a place in San Francisco -- where the Web site is based -- to get tested. Ideally you'll actually go for the test and then find out you're clean or, if not, how to get whatever you've gotten under control before you inadvertently bestow it on someone else.

The Web site, created by a San Francisco group called Internet Sexuality Information Services and sponsored by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, is by no means intended as a resource for bitter exes wishing to play practical jokes. Launched in October, inSPOT.org is believed to be the first of its kind: a convenient, anonymous (if you wish) means for gay men to let their sex partners know they should get tested -- a crucial means of disease control. Sexually transmitted diseases "are part of life," reads an inSPOT.org tag line. "One reason they're so common has nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with silence." The site's creators say the e-cards offer an attractive alternative to the prospect of turning over partner names to the DPH and letting it do the dirty work. "People are meeting online -- why not use the same technology to control the spread of STDs?" says Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, director of STD Prevention and Control Services at the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

So far, this logic seems to be working. "Most people I've talked to are saying, 'Why did it take so long to come up with this?'" says Karl Knapper, a neighborhood organizer for the STOP AIDS Project and a member of inSPOT.org's volunteer community advisory board. InSPOT.org is now getting about 750 visitors per day. In November 281 e-cards were sent to 461 people, with syphilis and gonorrhea the two most frequently cited STDs. (A drop-down menu on the card interface allows users to specify.) Seventy-five percent were sent anonymously. More than half of the people who received a card clicked through to learn more and get information about testing sites. "We're reaching the people most at risk -- those who have had sex with someone who was diagnosed positive for an STD and people who most likely otherwise would not be notified," says Deb Levine, executive director of ISIS.

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