Citation
Stein, Cheryl R.; Kaufman, Jay S.; Ford, Carol A.; Leone, Peter A.; Feldblum, Paul J.; & Miller, William C. (2008). Screening Young Adults for Prevalent Chlamydial Infection in Community Settings. Annals of Epidemiology, 18(7), 560-571. PMCID: PMC2490822Abstract
PURPOSE: Community-based testing may identify young adults in the general population with sexually transmitted chlamydial infection. To develop selective screening guidelines appropriate for community settings, the authors conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health Wave III (April 2, 2001, to May 9, 2002).METHODS: Separately for women and men, we developed three predictive models by using unconditional multiple logistic regression for survey data. To account for racial/ethnic disparity in prevalence, initial models included identical predictor characteristics plus information on 1) respondent's race/ethnicity; or 2) respondent's most recent partner's race/ethnicity; or 3) no information on race/ethnicity.
RESULTS: Chlamydia trachomatis diagnosis was available for 10,928 (88.6%) of the sexually experienced respondents. A combination of five characteristics for women and six characteristics for men identified approximately 80% of infections when testing CONCLUSION: The use of race/ethnicity in any screening algorithm is problematic and controversial, but the model without race information missed many diagnoses in the minority groups. Universal screening in high-prevalence regions and selective screening in low-prevalence regions may be one method of reaching the affected populations while avoiding the stigma of guidelines incorporating race/ethnicity.
URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annepidem.2008.03.002Reference Type
Journal ArticleYear Published
2008Journal Title
Annals of EpidemiologyAuthor(s)
Stein, Cheryl R.Kaufman, Jay S.
Ford, Carol A.
Leone, Peter A.
Feldblum, Paul J.
Miller, William C.