Hidden In Plain Sight: A Public Health Cross-Sectional Project to Address Syphilis and HIV in South Central South Dakota's Incarcerated Populations.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Syphilis, caused by Treponema pallidum, is a major public health concern, particularly in high-risk populations like incarcerated individuals. Timely diagnosis remains challenging, especially in rural and frontier communities. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of point-of-care (POC) syphilis and HIV testing at the Winner City Jail in South Dakota, a rural correctional facility with a high prevalence of syphilis and HIV risk factors. METHODS: This 12-week cross-sectional study (October 2 to December 19, 2024) tested new intakes from nine counties without prior syphilis or HIV history. POC testing was performed using the Chembio DPP HIV-Syphilis immunoassay, followed by confirmatory testing (RPR for syphilis, NAAT for HIV). Demographic and risk factor data were collected via interviews, and treatment was administered based on diagnosis. RESULTS: Of the 112 individuals tested, seven (6.3%) had reactive syphilis results, all confirmed by RPR testing. One individual tested positive for HIV on POC, but negative on confirmatory testing. Most syphilis cases were late latent stages (86%), and all were asymptomatic. Risk factors included unprotected sex, substance use, and prior incarceration. CONCLUSION: POC testing effectively identified syphilis and HIV in a rural correctional setting, enabling early diagnosis and treatment. While the Chembio test was highly accurate for syphilis, the false positive for HIV emphasizes the importance of confirmatory testing. Expanding this approach to other correctional facilities could reduce STI transmission in high-risk populations. Further studies are needed to assess long-term outcomes and expand testing to other STIs.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".