Sexual Health in the District

On Wednesday of last week, shortly after the Trojan Evolve Tour transformed Kogan Plaza into a safe sex education haven, DC Mayor Adrian Fenty announced that an advertising campaign to encourage HIV/AIDS testing and prevention will be launched in the District.

The campaign is in response to a report on the AIDS epidemic by the DC Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, which found that the city is not doing enough to increase public awareness of the epidemic. The problem is particularly important among youth, and age group for which the epidemic is growing at an alarming rate. According to the District of Columbia's Department of Health, roughly 1 out of every 100 young people ages 13 to 24 in the District is HIV infected or has full-blown AIDS. Almost 12,500 people in the District were known to have HIV or AIDS in 2006, the most recent year of statistics available.

Sexually transmitted diseases are one of the targets of the Trojan Evolve Tour, which featured a 40 foot long interactive bus, a pledge sheet students could sign to promise they would use a condom everytime they have sex, banana races, an Imax-style rollercoaster ride and, of course, free giveaways. The tour, billed as a grassroots campaign to raise awareness about the poor state of sexual health in America, will continue through November, according to the Trojan Condoms website.

-Monica Wysocki