National Coalition of STD Directors

Persons using chat rooms to find sexual partners have been identified by a
number of health jurisdictions in the US including San Francisco, Washington
State, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Florida and Pennsylvania. There is
evidence of an increased risk for syphilis, gonorrhea and HIV in persons
meeting sexual partners in AOL and other chat rooms.

CDC plans to hold an Internet Health Promotion Meeting in the near future to
discuss strategies for conducting health promotion on the Internet. In
anticipation of this upcoming meeting, NCSD coordinated a planning retreat
for a group of STD directors from affected areas to identify issues, make
recommendations around those issues and develop an agenda. The meeting was
held outside of Denver on May 6 -7.

While the meeting served its purpose of informing CDC's planning needs, it
also raised issues around areas that STD programs may need to address sooner
than later as they begin to develop policies and procedures. While some
project areas have been grappling with this issue for several years, others
have stumbled on to it or have been alerted to the problem through the
efforts of an intrepid DIS.

• What are the barriers to tracking chat room-related disease outbreaks
  (e.g. firewalls, censorship, on-line privacy, marketing barriers and
  restricted access to community chat rooms)?
  
• How can project areas overcome them?
  
• How can STD programs conduct on-line health education?
  
• How can they raise awareness of these special needs within their own
  health departments (e.g. how easy is it to find the link to the STD
  department within a state website?)
  
• Who can STD programs partner with locally to address these issues?
  
• What new protocols and criteria need to be developed around
  internet interventions?

On a broader scale, what sort of responsibility should Internet service
providers (ISP) bear? How can we tap into the Internet as an extension of
the public health arena? How do the challenges posed by the Internet differ
between urban and rural areas or large states and small states?

NCSD members who attended the Denver meeting have become the de facto
advisory group around this issue and will provide feedback to NCSD as it
moves forward on these issues.