UCI to Offer Anonymous HIV Testing : Health: Students and others can make an appointment for the service, which includes a counseling session, beginning in January.

Beginning next month, UC Irvine will offer anonymous HIV testing to students and other members of the campus as part of stepped-up efforts to promote sexual health, officials said Thursday.

The service, which will be available weekly on Tuesday afternoons, will be funded by the Laguna Beach Community Clinic, said Christine Leon, who coordinates sexual health promotion at the UCI Health Education Office. The clinic has been providing anonymous HIV testing in South County since 1987.

Students and others can make an appointment for the service, which includes a counseling session before blood is drawn. That takes about 25 minutes. Another counseling session, which lasts about 20 minutes and includes test results and health promotion tips, will be scheduled the week following the test.

“People will be able to call and use a real or assumed first name,” Leon said. Phone numbers will not be recorded or requested so that clients can feel comfortable about the service, and all of the testing will be done by people who are not affiliated with UCI, she said.

The Laguna Beach Community Clinic and the Orange County Health Care Agency in Santa Ana are among other off-campus sites in the county that offer anonymous testing, Leon said.

Health officials at UCI are initiating the testing service at the same time they are renewing efforts to reach out to Asian Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians as well as other students. Health workers are trying to recruit students with different backgrounds to promote safer sexual health practices on campus.

Of about 3,400 entering students at UCI this year, 40% reported that English is rarely or never spoken in their homes, Leon said.

“These students and their families or peers may not have easy access to health promotion programs or literature that are culturally relevant,” Leon said.

Staff members are reaching out to such students to recruit peer educators. Students will learn ways to resist sexual assault and to set boundaries for intimate relationships. They will also receive information about contraception and other sexual health subjects--and then learn ways to advise friends, families and classmates about such subjects.

A UC San Francisco study released in October indicated that HIV prevention efforts work best for teen-agers who have not become sexually active yet. But UCI health promoters hope their educational programs can change students’ practices before they contract sexually transmitted diseases.

Leon said a 1993 study shows that a significant number of students at UCI and other universities have habits that increase their chances for becoming infected with AIDS or HIV.

The nationwide study of nearly 4,000 students on 29 campuses, which included UCI, showed that three out of four students reported that they had sexual intercourse at least once, and half had more than three partners of the opposite sex in their lifetime.

About 45% of sexually active, unmarried students reported that they used condoms--and those with high numbers of lifetime sexual partners were least likely to say they used condoms. About 12% of the students said they had been diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease.