National Condom Week rolls out Monday

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow (Saturday) and kicks off National Condom Week. While sex seems prevalent in our society, Joan Thompson, a health educator at the University of Northern Iowa says statistics show there’s still a staggering lack of communication about intimacy. In visiting with students, Thompson says “It’s a lot easier to have sex than to talk about it,” but she says in this age of sexually-transmitted diseases, it’s vital for couples to talk about what they’ll use for S-T-D prevention. Thompson says S-T-D numbers continue to rise at a stunning rate. An estimated 65-million Americans have S-T-Ds and 15-million more are added to the list every year. Thompson says a recent study found 90-percent of women were embarrassed to discuss sexual issues with their partner. She fears the on-campus education efforts in particular are falling on deaf ears, based on the statistics. Two-thirds of all S-T-Ds occur in people 25-years old or younger, and at least one-in-four Americans will get an S-T-D and some point in their lives. While there are no planned condom give-aways at U-N-I this month, Thompson says year-round give-aways are in place and she goes through “boxes and boxes” each year.