ABSTRACT
The previous selection and several others have brought up the topic of stigma. This selection focuses on sexually transmitted infections, a health concern that tends to be highly stigmatized due to cultural tensions and ambiguities about sexuality, gender, and power. Like other diseases, sexually transmitted infections are not evenly patterned across space or across social categories such as gender and class. They are caused by a variety of persistent, emerging, and reemerging pathogens that take advantage of opportunities for transmission and may change their characteristics in response to environmental conditions (see Part II; selections 32, 34). This selection aims to improve the effectiveness of social means of interrupting transmission and preventing health complications of sexually transmitted infections. It illuminates factors that facilitate or impede the notification of sexual partners and seeks ways of improving notification rates.
