STI testing to be offered at lower cost starting in November

“I think it’s great and I’m glad they’re doing it,” said Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux ’11, co-founder of the student group Let’s Talk Sex.

While students on the Student Health Plan receive full insurance coverage for STI testing, students whose insurance plan does not cover testing or who wish to pay for testing themselves due to privacy concerns are charged $250 for gonorrhea and chlamydia testing, Finnie noted. She added that rapid HIV testing is offered at no cost to all students.

“This change will be a significant benefit to students on private family plans ... and to students who choose to pay for testing themselves,” Finnie explained.

Each year, all graduate students and 40 to 50 percent of undergraduates are on the Student Health Plan, Finnie said. The Student Health Plan costs $1,450 for the 2010-11 academic year, according to the UHS website.

UHS took student input into account in its attempt to find cost-effective, private alternatives for those whose insurance did not cover testing and to address privacy concerns, Finnie added.

“A huge part of our role as advocates for Princeton students is to find ways to make [these services] more readily available,” said Irfan Kherani ’11, president of the Sexual Health Advisors. “It’s an issue that we will never stop needing to deal with.” Kherani added that the group actively encouraged subsidized testing.

In the 2009-10 academic year, UHS conducted 681 tests for gonorrhea and chlamydia and 556 HIV tests for undergraduates, graduate students and their dependents, Finnie said. There were 7,592 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in the University in the 2009-10 academic year, according the Office of the Registrar’s website.

The change has been a work in progress for several years, Finnie said, adding that “offerings from the state and changes in technology have made it possible to conduct this testing in a more cost-effective manner.”

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But Thomson-DeVeaux said that publicizing the availability and confidentiality of the tests is as important as offering them at all.

“There’s a sense that people go in and don’t know what to expect,” Thomson-DeVeaux said. “UHS could do more to say, ‘This is like going to the dentist — you do it every year ... because it’s part of good health, not something that says you are engaging in risky sexual behavior.’”

Thuy-Lan Vo Lite ’12, co-editor of the feminist blog Equal Writes, said, “I’m very happy about it, but I could not say I saw it coming,” noting that in her experience, students have found interactions with UHS to be lacking, particularly with respect to sexual health.

Lite added that she feels students are generally too complacent about sexual health. “Most students know about STIs and how to prevent them,” she said. “But they just assume no one else has them at Princeton.”