UW Doctors Take STD Prevention to Prisons

A team of Wisconsin researchers, including two at the UW Medical School, is one of only four in the nation selected to work on a major national initiative on prevention of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in young male inmates being released back into the community.

The Wisconsin team includes James Sosman, associate director of UW Hospital’s HIV Care Program and assistant professor of medicine, and Armond Start, associate professor of family medicine.

The five-year study, made possible by a $1.5 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is aimed at 18- to 25-year-old male inmates. Research has shown that young men entering prison have much higher rates of HIV and STD infection than the general public. Despite this, most prisoners are released having received little education about proper health behavior and disease prevention, thereby posing a threat to the public health.

“We’ll be taking an in-depth look at the barriers to HIV and STD prevention among prisoners,” says Sosman. “We’ll then develop a program to break down these barriers, a program that we hope will have a positive impact on the health of these individuals and, in that respect, the overall health of our community.”

Adds Start: “These kinds of studies have never been done on HIV and many other diseases when the inmate is incarcerated and essentially a captive to any kind of medical education effort. This is the beginning and speaks very well of the medical center here.”

The UW is uniquely poised to participate in this study because it provides medical treatment for all of Wisconsin’s HIV positive prisoners and has an established relationship with the prison system. Last July, U.S. News & World Report ranked UW Hospital and Clinics as one of the nations’ top hospitals for AIDS care.