Hopkins students seeking free testing for Chlamydia at the Health & Wellness Center may be surprised when they find themselves landed with a bill.
According to Health & Wellness Center Director Dr. Alain Joffe, due to new testing procedures at the Maryland State Laboratory, the lab that previously analyzed all of the Health Center's Chlamydia testing for free will no longer accept any samples sent to them by the University. As a result, students who were once able to get tested for Chlamydia free of charge will have to pay $28 to get tested on campus.
"We were informed [by the Maryland State Laboratory] in a memo that they were switching to a better test, meaning that it would pick up more cases more quickly, etc." Joffe said. "We were also told that it was a more costly test."
The lab claimed that since it had no way of billing students or recouping the money it would cost to analyze samples sent to them by the Health Center, they would only offer Chlamydia testing to a select group of people in the state, presumably through state family planning clinics.
According to plans outlined in the Maryland State Laboratory Web site, effective Feb. 2, the lab will be upgrading to Nucleic Acid Amplification (NAA) based testing, which is currently becoming the standard in Chlamydia detection. NAA based testing amplifies target nucleic acid, DNA or RNA affected by the Chlamydia bacteria, and tends to be more sensitive than older methods of testing. The researchers in charge of the new testing implementations could not be reached for comment.
The Health & Wellness Center will now be sending samples to the Hopkins School of Medicine Chlamydia lab, which will charge the school considerably less than a commercial laboratory would, whose fees could be as high as $160 for both Chlamydia and gonorrhea testing. Some students don't see the rise in prices as drastic enough to cause problems.
"As much as I think testing should be more easily accessible, it's still worth it for people to get tested if they need to," sophomore Emily King said. "Chlamydia can be a huge problem, and the price isn't astronomically high."
However, many are still concerned that the rise in costs will affect students' decisions in terms of getting tested.
"We're about to see a big fallout in testing on campus now that the option for free testing does not exist anymore," Joffe said. "This is not something that I am happy to see happen."
"I think that charging money for Chlamydia testing will hurt a lot of students, especially anyone who is struggling to save or who was ambivalent about taking the test in the first place," sophomore Remy Patrizio said. "If I was really nervous about [the possibility of having Chlamydia], I'd take the test, but otherwise I'd wait. There's less of an incentive to get tested if it's going to cost you money."
The new cost for testing will most likely affect women more than men. Testing for Chlamydia in males is usually done either through urine testing or through the less popular urethral swab; while the urethral swab method of testing had previously been free of charge, the urine test had cost $7.50 through the Maryland State Laboratory.
"Men are generally not a fan of the urethral swab, so most people probably didn't take advantage of free Chlamydia testing before the price change," junior Marc Perkins said. "They may not even notice the difference in cost for the urine testing."
Perkins added that he still thought that charging for STI testing would end up hurting the student body at Hopkins.
"We shouldn't have to pay for testing," he said. "It'll definitely reduce the number of people who will get tested. The last thing we need at Hopkins is a Chlamydia outbreak."
The tests are covered in full for those under the Hopkins student health insurance plan; additionally, it may be possible to bill part of the testing to independent insurance plans. However, some students see that as even more of a deterrent in terms of getting tested, voicing concern that billing their insurance companies for STI testing would compromise their anonymity.
"A lot of people's parents are the primary policy-holders for their insurance companies," freshman Rachel Sax said. "Most people wouldn't want their parents to know if they were getting tested for Chlamydia."
Joffe asserted that he was aware that the new cost for Chlamydia testing could be detrimental to the health of the student body, and affirmed that Health & Wellness was working to find new ways to promote outside sources for testing.
"I definitely worry that people won't get tested," Joffe said. "We're trying to come up with as many options as we can, especially for those who will not be able to afford the price at the Health Center."
Some of these outside options include providing the names of clinics around the Baltimore area that could perform the test for free. However, the most highly recommended alternative option for Chlamydia testing was iwantthekit.org, a Web site that offers men and women free Chlamydia testing kits in Maryland, West Virginia, Denver, Colo., D.C. and selected counties in rural Illinois.
Run by the Region III Infertility Prevention Project, a Center of Disease Control-run organization dedicated to the prevention of infertility caused by STIs like Chlamydia and gonorrhea, iwantthekit.org was started up in 2004 as a research project that hoped to reach out to offer screening to people who might not otherwise go to a clinic.
"Iwantthekit.org was started to be educational, to educate adolescents and teenagers about Chlamydia as well as other sexually transmitted diseases," Dr. Charlotte Gaydos, a professor in the Division of Infectious diseases at the Hopkins School of Medicine who was instrumental in developing the Web site, said. "It also made it easier for women who were asymptomatic to get tested for free, since if the disease went untreated it could lead to serious reproductive problems."
Iwantthekit.org accepts vaginal swabs from women and urine tests from men, providing the kits and sending back results for no charge. The entire process is completely confidential. Additionally, if students do test positive for Chlamydia through the iwantthekit.org process, they can still receive treatment through the Health & Wellness Center.
"We have agreements with clinics around Maryland, and we can assist in setting up appointments for you if you do test positive," Gaydos said. "Dr. Joffe has agreed to treat Chlamydia here should a student on the Homewood campus test positive for the disease."
The price change for Chlamydia testing will not affect anyone seeking testing for Herpes, HIV or syphilis. Students seeking testing for those diseases can still get tested confidentially for free at the Health & Wellness Center.
The most common sexually transmitted bacteria in the United States, Chlamydia is typically easily treatable once detected. However, Chlamydia is easily spread and, if undetected and untreated, could lead to pain, infection, infertility and sterility.
According to Joffe, the Center for Disease Control recommends that every sexually active woman under the age of 25 get tested annually for the disease.
