Home-Based STI Testing More Popular Among Men
Chlamydia isn’t just a big deal here in the UK. With an estimated 1.8 million people aged 14-39 infected with the STI, it’s a huge concern in the US too. It’s no surprise - chlamydia often has no symptoms, so it can be passed person to person without either one knowing a thing. In many cases a person won’t know until they get tested or develop one of the more serious long term health problems associated with an undiagnosed infection.
With devastating long term health problems, and with 1 in 14 young people infected here in England, there’s no shortage of campaigns urging young people to get tested. While the drives to get people tested tend to direct them towards the clinic, it isn’t for everyone.
Some people might feel too embarrassed, worried about what the process of getting tested is all about, or it simply might be too difficult for them to get to the clinic - due to opening times or due to issues with transport. For whatever reason, there are still people being missed by STI testing in clinics, and that’s where home-based testing methods like - Freetest.me - come in handy.
Home-based STI testing might just have the upper hand on the clinic. A recent study of 200 men in the US concluded that they were 60% more likely to get tested for STIs if they were able to do the test at home rather than in the clinic. Although the men still had to collect the kit from the clinic and drop it off again for their sample to be tested, the home based method still proved more popular with 72% completing the home test compared to 48% in the clinic.
Of those who completed a follow up questionnaire, 95% said it was ‘very easy’ to follow home screening kit instructions and 79% of those who were tested at the clinic believed it would be ‘very easy’ to do at home instead. Participants in the home-based group also said that the main reason they completed the STI test was the convenience of the home test kit.
This post isn’t to say that clinic-based testing is no good. In the same study, when quizzed about their experience afterwards, over 80% of the men who took part reported being very satisfied with the test and 99% said they would recommend it to their male friends, regardless of which testing method they were assigned.
Recommendations from your friends are always important. It gets you thinking - if your mates are doing it, maybe you should too, right? At Freetest.me we know you can’t beat a good recommendation. 35.3% of our users who answer our online survey said they’d heard of us through word of mouth, that’s second only to search engines.
Whether it be at the clinic or at home, if you think you have put yourself at risk of catching chlamydia, get tested. If you do decide you’d like to complete a test at home rather than at the clinic, enter your details at Freetest.me to order a free postal chlamydia test.