During the last academic year, over 5,000 UNT students were tested for HIV, syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea.  The tracking began in August 2016 and ended in August 2017. The 2017-2018 academic year isn’t over yet, as of April 20, 2018, 4,385 students have been tested this year.

     Kerry Stanhope, the Health Education and Outreach Coordinator, says that it’s important that students are aware of the symptoms of STDs, so they are not taken by surprise.

     “We see a large number of chlamydia patients because it’s asymptomatic,” Stanhope said. “The only time you’re going to pick that up is during routine testing, which is why we recommend going in and getting tested every 6 months if you’re going to be sexually active.”

     Out of the 1143 HIV test distributed, 0.61 percent were positive, 1.1 percent of the 1092 syphilis tests, 10.87 percent of the 1637 chlamydia tests and 2.02 percent of the 1637 of the gonorrhea tests. The chlamydia and gonorrhea tests are equivalent since they are pulled from the same group and then tested for different strands.

     The Student Health and Wellness center is required to report any positive tests to the Denton County Public Health. The numbers that are positive are added to the numbers of Denton County.

     “It doesn’t provide a lot of demographic information, it just provides total numbers to see how many positives there are,” Stanhope said.

     In 2015 Denton County reported over 500,000 thousand tests for chlamydia, the Texas rate for chlamydia sat slightly above 500,000 while the city of Denton had around 300,000 tests.

     From 2012-2016, the number of females in Denton County with chlamydia dropped from 400,000 to 350,000 while the number of males increased from 140,000 to 190,000.

      Out of the population of Denton County tested for Chlamydia in 2016, 40 percent were white, 24 percent were black, 18 percent were Hispanic, 15 percent were unknown and 3% were other.

     “Everybody should be able to have affordable protection,” Stanhope said. “If they need additional guidance they can also meet one on one with our health education coordinator.”