ST. LOUIS —
In addition to crime, there's another cringe-worthy list where St. Louis ranks number one.
It's the CDC's Sexually Transmitted Disease list.
But does that mean STL is truly number one when it comes to STDs?
Our sources for this story are the CDC report itself and Dr. Hilary Reno from Washington University's Medical School, who specializes in Sexual Health.
According to Dr. Reno, St. Louis may rank first in STDs when you look at the numbers based on population, but if you include the entire metro area, it's not nearly as serious.
The St. Louis Metropolitan Region ranks 16th in Chlamydia and 12th in Gonorrhea.
That's bad, but certainly not the worst.
So why are those numbers so vastly different?
Dr. Reno says across the nation, you see higher STD rates in urban areas versus suburban, so not having St. Louis County as a part of those statistics makes St. Louis's numbers look a lot worse.
Of course, if you just look at the raw numbers of cases -- Los Angeles, Chicago and New York round out the Top Three in Gonorrhea cases.
St. Louis ranks 49th.
So we can verify, St. Louis is not the STD capital of the United States.
That being said, Dr. Reno says she doesn't mind St. Louis's ranking as number one, because it gets people's attention, and make no mistake, it's still a huge problem.
If you need contraceptives or free testing, there are multiple resources you can consider using like STLCondoms.com and GetTestedSTL.org.
