STI Knowledge in Berlin Adolescents

Frederik Tilmann Von Rosen, Antonella Juline Von Rosen, Falk Müller-Riemenschneider, Inken Damberg and Peter Tinnemann
Additional contact information
Frederik Tilmann Von Rosen: Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Antonella Juline Von Rosen: Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Falk Müller-Riemenschneider: Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics, 10117 Berlin, Germany
Inken Damberg: Institute for Public Health and Nursing Research, University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany
Peter Tinnemann: Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Institute for Social Medicine, Epidemiology and Health Economics, 10117 Berlin, Germany

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) pose a significant threat to individual and public health. They disproportionately affect adolescents and young adults. In a cross-sectional study, we assessed self-rated and factual STI knowledge in a sample of 9th graders in 13 secondary schools in Berlin, Germany. Differences by age, gender, migrant background, and school type were quantified using bivariate and multivariable analyses. A total of 1177 students in 61 classes participated. The mean age was 14.6 (SD = 0.7), 47.5% were female, and 52.9% had at least one immigrant parent. Knowledge of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was widespread, but other STIs were less known. For example, 46.2% had never heard of chlamydia, 10.8% knew of the HPV vaccination, and only 2.2% were aware that no cure exists for HPV infection. While boys were more likely to describe their knowledge as good, there was no general gender superiority in factual knowledge. Children of immigrants and students in the least academic schools had lower knowledge overall. Our results show that despite their particular risk to contract an STI, adolescents suffer from suboptimal levels of knowledge on STIs beyond HIV. Urgent efforts needed to improve adolescent STI knowledge in order to improve the uptake of primary and secondary prevention.

Keywords: sexual health; sexually transmitted diseases; sexually transmitted infections; adolescent health; Berlin; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/1/110/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/1/110/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:1:p:110-:d:126311

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().