SB 1090: Sexually transmitted diseases: outreach and screening services.

The existing Communicable Disease Prevention and Control Act defines the term venereal disease to mean syphilis, gonorrhea, chancroid, lymphopathia venereum, granuloma inguinale, and chlamydia. Existing law requires the State Department of Public Health to develop and review plans and participate in a program for the prevention and control of venereal disease, and authorizes the department to establish, maintain, and subsidize clinics, dispensaries, and prophylactic stations for the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of venereal disease.

This bill would delete the term venereal disease and would instead use the term sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), which would be defined as diseases that are primarily transmitted through sexual contact. The bill would require the department, to the extent funds are appropriated by the Legislature, to allocate grants to local health jurisdictions for STD outreach, screening, and other core services. The bill would target and prioritize the allocation of funds to counties based on population and incidence of STDs and would require the allocation of funds to targeted counties to balance the need to spread funding to as many counties as possible and the need to provide meaningful services to each funded county. The bill would make specified mandates and accountability measures applicable to the county when providing the outreach, screening, and other core services.

This bill would provide that the department, in awarding funds pursuant to these provisions, may authorize innovative and impactful outreach, screening, and other core services, such as voluntary screening of inmates and wards of county adult and juvenile corrections facilities, and use of state-of-the-art testing modalities. The bill would require the department to use the accountability measures developed under the bill in order to monitor the activities funded by the bill and would limit the departments expenditures on administrative costs to no more than 10% of the funds appropriated by the Legislature for this purpose.

The bill would also delete obsolete provisions and make conforming changes.