Why these STDs

We are a new service, and we're piloting our site with the three STDs that we feel best meet the following criteria:

• Are curable
• Are easily tested for
• Are fairly common in the United States
• Are often asymptomatic

Why these criteria:

• The acceptability of email-based partner notification has only been assessed for curable STDs such as chlamydia. There are no data (that we know of) on how Americans would feel about sending or receiving a partner notification email for an incurable disease such as HIV.
• Receiving an anonymous partner notification via email creates a lot of anxiety. If people can't easily be tested for an STD, or if the results are hard to interpret (such as with herpes diagnostics), it's harder for someone receiving that email to relieve that anxiety, and they could end up feeling guilty their whole lives for spreading disease when in fact they don't have an STD. Since we can't be 100% sure that the senders of our notification emails are in fact diagnosed with an STD, we're just not ready to take that chance yet.
• Since we are just starting out, we want to pilot our site with STDs that are relatively common. If our evaluations show that our service is being used as intended and that there is a demand for adding additional STDs, we will consider adding less common infections to our list.
• There are some STDs, such as crabs (pubic lice) that almost always have symptoms. While we would encourage in-person partner notification for infections like these, we're concerned that enabling anonymous notification for these disease might lead to more pranking than useful notifications.