A Few Healthy Tips for Spring Break Trips

With spring break arriving, Kent State University Health Services (KSUHS) is encouraging students to use their free time wisely and avoid risky behaviors -- especially unprotected sex, binge drinking, and overexposure to the sun. Students needing STD screening should drop by KSUHS, said Raymond Leone, a physician for the department.

"People want to get out of here, they want to relax," Leone said. "They just have to use their head with everything -- with drinking, with exposure to the sun and the elements ... You don't want to ruin everything you've been working for."

More students visit the DeWeese Health Center for STD testing just after summer break than at any other time. The second-busiest time is after spring break. "Other than when a woman is coming in for her routine exam, [students] come in when they think they might have had an exposure or an unprotected incident," Leone said.

"It's the combination of activities, that there are a lot of people gathering at certain locations," said Joan Seidel, infection control coordinator at Robinson Memorial Hospital in Ravenna. "People are having unplanned and unprotected sex, and by sex I mean it could be oral, anal or vaginal. Sometimes people think that they can't get an STD if they only have oral sex, but it would be by any of those means."

"Don't let getting away and cutting loose and alcohol be the reason you make a silly decision," Leone said. "We have a lot of people that come in and it's like, 'If I had to do this over again, I wouldn't have done it this way; I would have at least used a condom; and as a matter of fact, as I think about it the next day, I probably wouldn't have been into it with that person.'"

Back to other news for March 2009