Bärbel Knäuper

Bärbel Knäuper McGill University

| Skip to search Skip to navigation Skip to page content

User Tools (skip):

Sign in | Saturday, December 1, 2018
Sister Sites: McGill website | myMcGill

McGill Reporter
January 25, 2001 - Volume 33 Number 09
| Help
Page Options (skip): Larger

Bärbel Knäuper

The vigorous AIDS/HIV awareness campaigns of the past two decades have generally been very successful in educating the public about the disease.

Photo PHOTO: Owen Egan

With the focus of many of these campaigns being school-age children, it is not unusual to encounter high school students with a good level of knowledge about how the disease is transmitted and how to protect themselves.

But the emphasis on education that has been placed on AIDS and HIV is not equalled for other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and that could have serious health and economic consequences, says psychology professor Bärbel Knäuper.

"The public focus has been on [AIDS/HIV] and also the research focus has been on it. As a consequence, some of the other STDs have become neglected and they're on the rise in Canada," warns Knäuper. She says the reason she got interested in the subject in the first place was because she felt it was understudied.

A glance at Health Canada's web site seems to prove her right. While there is loads of information on AIDS/HIV, there are only a handful of links to very general information sites on other STDs.

According to Health Canada, epidemiological reports of incidences of viral STDs which cannot be cured, such as genital herpes and human papillomavirus (HPV), are lacking.

It is believed that HPV is transmitted by skin-to-skin contact, making it an easy STD to contract. Furthermore, a McGill study cited by Health Canada found that 22% of female students in a cohort of 489 were infected with HPV. The disease is affecting a lot of people.

That is particularly worrisome because of HPV's strong links to cervical cancer. Health Canada estimates that as many as 90% of the women who have cervical cancer are also infected with HPV.

Bacterial STDs, which can be cured if detected early enough, such as gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia, are declining steadily, with syphilis nearing elimination.

Knäuper, who came to McGill in September after teaching in her native Germany for three years at the Free University of Berlin, received a $270,000 grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to set up a survey lab that will study the risk behaviours related to the transmission of non-HIV STDs.

The main focus of the lab will be to study why people underestimate their likelihood of contracting STDs and why they delay seeking testing, diagnosis and treatment.

Studies indicate that only 10% of people think they will get an STD in their lifetime. The real numbers, says Knäuper, hover around 25%.

She believes that the lack of public discourse and the extensive attention paid to AIDS has warped people's perception of reality when it concerns their risk of contracting STDs.

"People overestimate their risk of contracting HIV.

"When you go to schools or in the general population, people overestimate, first, the likelihood of contracting HIV and second, how likely it is when they have intercourse with an infected partner that they would get it," she says.

"This situation is totally different for other STDs. There are other STDs which are more prevalent and spread more easily, but people underestimate their risk. All the public attention has been on [AIDS] and people think that it's a really widespread epidemic. It's not." Infection rates, at least in developed countries, are on the wane.

"There's this interesting dynamic: you talk about something a lot, people think it's frequent. You rarely talk about something, it's rarely in the media, then people think it's not such a problem. So something needs to be done there," says Knäuper.

The research in the survey lab will be conducted through a series of computer-assisted, self-conducted interviews. Knäuper plans to make use of the Internet and automated telephone systems as methods of allowing people to interview themselves.

Ensuring as much anonymity as possible encourages respondents to divulge personal details about their sex lives honestly and freely, she says.

"[People answering these survey questions], ideally, would not interact with any human being. They would never have to fear that they would see the interviewer again in, say, downtown Montreal."

Eventually, Knäuper wants to use the accumulated research to implement "tailored interventions," or customized education, that would help people more

accurately perceive their own risk of STD infection.

These interventions would also include improving communication skills, particularly between newly sexually active partners who, Knäuper says, should learn to speak to one another about mutual testing for various STDs, not only HIV.

view sidebar content | back to top of page

Search