E-cards are usually used to spread the joy, so to speak, but
a project called inSPOT (http://www.inSPOT.org)
appears to have used them for better purposes, although they aren’t nice at all
when you read them. Via this Web site, people can send e-cards in which they
can notify their sex partners if they have a sexually transmitted disease. This
way of spreading the news seems unusual, but also successful in an era of
computers and technology. And it’s also an easier way since you don’t have the
person you want to notify right in front of you or on the phone yelling when
hearing the news.
The San Francisco Department of Public Health and nonprofit Internet Sexuality Information Services launched the site back in 2004 after a study on gay men concluded that while men are likely to tell their primary partners about diagnoses, they are not as likely to inform casual partners. The same study showed that men overwhelmingly said they would inform casual partners if there were a convenient and anonymous way to do so (73 percent of respondents).
"We were seeing these things and thought there must be a way we can use technology as a means of prevention, not just a transmission tool," said Deb Levine, the executive director of I.S.I.S. Inc.
Since 2004, the project has been expanded to other parts of the country and
now targets heterosexual as well. The service is now available in
The service allows users to choose if they want to keep
their identity hidden. Each e-card urges people receiving them to get tested
right away, as well as information about where and how to get tested. Since its
launch, 30,000 people have sent over 49,500 cards. In 2006 and 2007, e-cards
were sent because of the following STDs: 15.4 percent were sent for gonorrhea,
14.9 percent for syphilis, 11.6 percent for Chlamydia, 9.3 percent for HIV,
48.8 percent for other STDs (trichomoniasis, viral hepatitis, pubic lice or
“crabs”).
The initiative of launching such a site was something many people couldn’t agree with from a psychological point of view.
“It would be very psychologically damaging to someone who thought they had a
relationship with an individual and then they end up with an e-mail like this.
I think they're sarcastic, I think they're making light of a very serious
situation,” said Gail Wyatt, a clinical psychologist, sex therapist and
professor in the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the
Nineteen million new STD cases (including 900,000 cases of
Chlamydia, 330,000 cases of gonorrhea and 55,400 estimated new HIV infections)
are diagnosed in the
More information about inSPOT can be found in this week’s PLoS Medicine.