Partner notification in the real world: A four site time-allocation study

Background and Objectives: Although partner notification has been a long-st anding intervention and prevention strategy for sexually transmitted diseas es (STD), variations in partner notification practices across sites have ne ver been documented, Goals of the Study: To describe provider-assisted partner notification prac tices in four STD programs in the United States. Study Design: Eleven disease intervention specialists (DIS) in each of thre e urban sites and seven DIS in one rural site documented their activities a nd clients for 14 working days using a personal digital assistant, Results: Of 2,506 recorded activity hours across sites, 37.4% of the record ed time was spent on partner notification (PN) activities with 1148 clients . Field visits to locate contacts accounted for the largest proportion of t ime spent on PN, Overall, PN clients were cases of or were contacts to nonp rimary and secondary (P&S) syphilis (39.6%), gonorrhea (25.5%), chlamydia ( 18.0%), HIV/AIDS (10.4%), and P&S syphilis (6.5%), Conclusion: The activities which constitute PN, the diseases for which PN i s used, and the time spent on each PN client vary across sites, More resear ch is needed on the determinants of these variations and their association with the ultimate goal of disease prevention.