The absence of cartoon bunnies wishing the recipient a happy birthday isn't the only unconventional thing about the e-cards on inSPOT's Web site, www.inspot.org. Far from yielding good tidings, the cards contain a message alerting the viewer that he or she might have contracted a sexually transmitted disease and should get tested.
The Web site, the Internet Notification Service for Partners or Tricks (inSPOT), allows the option of sending the cards anonymously and includes a basic fact sheet about STDs, links to information on talking to one's partner about STDs and a section designed to instruct people on where and how to get checked.
Partner notification is a tried-and-true method of reducing STDs
said Deb Levine, executive director of Internet Sexuality Information Services, Inc. It's much better to tell people using e-cards than to not tell them at all.
ISIS Inc. is a non-profit organization that wrote the site's content and coordinated designers and engineers who built it, Levine said.
Levine said the site was launched in October 2004 in San Francisco with funding from the San Francisco Department of Public Health following focus group discussions and community advisory boards comprised mostly of gay men.
They told their primary partners but did not tell their secondary or casual sex partners Levine said. The men said they would use an easier method of notification if it was available, Levine said.
E-cards are not a substitute for face-to-face communication Levine said, but because STDs have a stigma attached to them
many people don't tell their partners.
Levine said the company was asked to replicate the site in other cities and states in conjunction with local health departments and community-based organizations.
Individuals can still send the cards from cities and states not listed on the Web site, but information about local places to get tested is not provided.
The tones of the e-cards available in each section also vary according to the preferences of the local community.
In San Francisco
our group of gay men felt that delivery of the information should be light and humorous
Levine said. She also said advisory board members in Indiana were much more interested in a compassionate response.
OU junior Anna Colaner said she might mistake some of the cards for a joke because of their lighthearted nature.
I think it's kind of ironic that the results of such an intimate act are (made to be) kind of jovial
Colaner said.
Danielle Greco, a first-year medical student at OU, said she would probably get tested regardless of any dishonorable motivation on the part of the sender.
Even if it was a joke
it doesn't hurt for people to go and get regular tests anyway
Greco said. They might have something and not even know it.
17
