A new report from Invigor Medical analyzing data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, has found that Georgia has the fourth highest STD rate in the U.S.
In 2023, Georgia saw a total of 112,143 new STD cases – about 1,020 per 100,000 residents, putting Georgia among the four states where STD rates exceed 1,000 cases per 100,000 residents following Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alaska. Other Southern states, including Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Arkansas, also ranked in the top ten of STD rates due to challenges in prevention like gaps in healthcare access, limited sexual health education, and structural barriers to screening and treatment.
Georgia ranked the highest for new HIV cases in the country (2,359 new cases), third in the country for gonorrhea (30,307 new cases), fifth in the country for chlamydia (71,294 new cases), and 12th in the country for syphilis (8,183 new cases). While Richmond County, Georgia, had the highest rate of STD cases per 100,000 residents at 1,884, Fulton County followed close behind at 1,805 and saw the highest volume of chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV in Georgia.
Nationwide, the reported STD rates have climbed significantly over the past decade. There were approximately 2.5 million new STD cases, up from 1.8 million in 2013.
Source: Invigor Medical analysis of CDC data
Among these cases, Black Americans were disproportionately impacted. Black Americans saw a seven times higher rate of STDs compared to their white counterparts, at 2,250 cases per 100,000 compared to 319, respectively. According to the report, this disparity is influenced by systemic factors like unequal access to testing and treatment, stigma, and barriers to sexual health education and care.
While American women were about 10 percent more likely than men to be diagnosed with an STD in 2023, this may likely be due to the higher likelihood of STD screenings at routine reproductive visits along with higher biological susceptibility to infection. Among young people ages 13 to 24, however, the rates for women are nearly double the rate for men of the same age.
You can read the full findings of Invigor Medical’s report here.
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