ABSTRACT
On April 23, 2010, The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report presented recent findings from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey documenting the prevalence of herpes infection, both oral and genital, in the US population. This chapter talks about the CDC's vexed report because it helpfully highlights the limits of intersectionality in quantitative public health research, especially when, as is often the case, intersectionality, as a term, stands in for naming demographic differences. Since the 1990s, public health, like many fields, has increasingly heralded intersectionality as a guiding principle and gold standard theory. The chapter explores current debates within the field of the uses and usefulness of intersectionality as a guiding framework for sexually transmitted disease epidemiology. It then offers some valuable models for understanding intersectional analysis in public health as well as some potential limits to this commitment.
