NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine;Health and Medicine Division;Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice;Committee on Prevention and Control of Sexually Transmitted Infections in the United States; Crowley JS, Geller AB, Vermund SH, editors. Sexually Transmitted Infections: Adopting a Sexual Health Paradigm. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2021 Mar 24.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine;Health and Medicine Division;Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice;Committee on Prevention and Control of Sexually Transmitted Infections in the United States; Crowley JS, Geller AB, Vermund SH, editors.
Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2021 Mar 24.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) provide national guidance to prevent, screen/test for, and treat sexually transmitted infections (STIs). This analysis compared the CDC/USPSTF recommendations to STI guidelines published by various health professional organizations, including the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the American College of Physicians (ACP), the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA), the American Public Health Association (APHA), and various nursing organizations (American Nurses Association [ANA]). Some organizations required a membership in order to view the entirety of materials on their site, so additional guidelines may have been published that are not publicly available and thus not included in this analysis.
Professional organizations overall provided recommendations that are consistent or mostly consistent with CDC and USPSTF guidelines. It was more common for professional organizations to publish a paucity of information rather than inaccurate information. Many organizations directed readers to CDC or USPSTF for more detailed guidelines and focused more on the guidelines that pertained only to their population of specialization (such as women for ACOG and pediatrics for AAP). It was also more common for medical societies to offer specific screening/ treatment recommendations, in contrast to organizations for nursing, physician’s assistants, or public health, which tended to publish policy recommendations.
Recommendations are coded as follows:
Recommendations consistent with CDC/USPSTF recommendations are noted with a plus sign + Recommendations that are partially inconsistent with CDC/USPSTF are noted with a number sign #While some professional organizations have not published guidelines regarding chlamydia (ACP, AAPA, ANA), those from ACOG, AAP, and AAFP are largely in consensus with CDC/USPSTF, with some minor differences. AAFP recommends screening for men who have sex with men (MSM) if at risk (rather than all sexually active MSM), while ACOG recommends routinely screening all pregnant women (rather than just those under 25 and those >25 with risk factors).
