High STD rate can be addressed with more education
Christopher Fisher, Ph.D., talks about sex in a matter-of-fact, non-judgmental way. It wasn’t always easy until he learned to teach and counsel youth about sex 20 years ago while in college.
"Once you get beyond the snickers, giggles and embarrassment, sex is really quite fascinating," he said.
Assistant professor of health promotion, social and behavioral health in the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health, Dr. Fisher is trained in community-based participatory research, sexuality education, sexual health, gender and human sexuality.
He came to UNMC last year by way of San Francisco and Bloomington, Ind., where he began his education at Indiana University in business and marketing. Later, he returned to the Midwestern city — home of the famous Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction — to complete his studies in sexuality and public health.
The subject of sex, he’s finding, is a double-edged sword. There’s a lot of interest, but an enormous amount of ignorance, as illustrated by questions he’s been asked:
· Can I get herpes from a towel?
· Can my girlfriend get pregnant if there’s a blanket between us, we have our clothes on and I orgasm?
Then, there is Douglas County’s sexually transmitted disease (STD) epidemic, which is double the national rate for chlamydia and nearly twice the rate for gonorrhea over the past five years.
"Everyone in the county who is having sex is at some level of risk. But, the single largest age group affected by STDs in Omaha is 15 – to 19-year-olds," Dr. Fisher said. "To stop this epidemic we must provide more education and increase the opportunities to be tested and treated."
In addition to his STD work with state health and education leaders, Dr. Fisher wants to establish community-based participatory research projects to determine needs in the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender communities. He also wants to study HIV prevention among men in the South Omaha Latino communities.
Much of the existing sexual research has been done on the coasts, but not the Midwest.
"Nebraska is fertile ground for sex research," he said.
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