NEW
 Interactive Website Launched:
Visit FACEitFlorida.com

The Florida Department of Health, Bureau of STD Prevention and Control has a new web automated human interaction (wahi) internet site called Florida’s Access to Comprehensive Education using Internet Technology—FACE IT for short. The launch date, April 1, 2010, coincides with the first day of STD Awareness Month. Visit www.FACEitFlorida.com to face the facts, face the stigma, and face tomorrow.

The 3T's to prevent the spread of STDs:

Talk: Talk to your partner and your health care provider about risk factors, safer sex methods and testing

Test: Make an appointment for STD testing

Treat: Treat the disease and avoid additional health problems

The STD Awareness Campaign presents 3T’s to prevent the spread of STDs: Talk, Test, Treat. Each of Florida’s 67 counties conducts educational activities.  For more information visit the STD Awareness website. If you have questions or comments, feel free to contact the Bureau via phone (850-245-4303) or email (HSD_STD@doh.state.fl.us).

If you can't tell them about an STD in person or over the phone, in Florida there is another option. 
Using inSPOT, you can send e-cards anonymously OR from your email address at: www.inSPOT.org/Florida
 

TALLAHASSEE - The Florida Department of Health is advising Florida practitioners to discontinue use of fluoroquinolones for the treatment of gonorrhea.  The decision is based on recent data analysis from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Gonococcal Isolate Surveillance Project (GISP), a sentinel surveillance system based in 28 U.S. cities, including Miami.  

For more information please select:  STD Press Release (PDF 63KB) or MMWR Update of CDC's Sexually Transmitted Diseases Treatment Guidelines.

In January 2007, the Bureau of Sexually Transmitted Disease released a new web-based application called PRISM (Patient Reporting, Investigation and Surveillance Manager). PRISM has been designed to receive electronic lab results from the public labs of the state of Florida. This will decrease the time frame in which an infection is brought to our attention. Once the application receives the lab results, the local STD program will be notified via a task list that a new record has arrived. The STD program supervisor will then determine whether the patient is a priority case, such as a pregnant female, a minor under twelve years of age or someone who has been seen with multiple instances of infection, and then assign it to an STD Epidemiologist (aka Disease Intervention Specialist). This will be a time savings of at least a week compared to the old application, STD-MIS, and provides enhanced patient management tools help the Bureau of STD better serve Floridians.