Re-evaluating current public health policy: alternative public health nursing approaches to sexually transmitted infection testing for teens and males who have sex with males.
OBJECTIVE
Due to a recent increase in the rates of reportable sexually transmitted infections (STI) across Canada, and the movement of public health nursing initiatives to a health promotion/illness prevention model, this paper proposes alternative strategies to current public health initiatives to encourage individuals who are labelled as at-risk by public health discourses, such as teens and males who have sex with males (MSM), to undertake preventative screening.
To undertake this task, we approached Health Canada's (2002) determinants of health utilizing Lupton's (1995) post-structuralist work on public health to suggest that for some members of these groups, health is not an imperative.


CONCLUSIONS
As such, we propose that increasing anonymous testing and its advertisement would provide one means of providing population-sensitive care and could thus increase the screening rates of individuals within groups who reject the public health "healthy" disquisition.
O'Byrne
Patrick
P
School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Ottawa, 451 Smyth Road, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1H 8M5.
Holmes
Dave
D
D000293:Adolescent; D016497:Adolescent Health Services; D002170:Canada; D003219:Confidentiality; D006291:Health Policy; D018451:Homosexuality, Male; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D011637:Public Health Nursing; D012749:Sexually Transmitted Diseases / Q000517:prevention & control*; D040241:Social Marketing