Trojan condoms teams up with IU to conduct research

For the next three years, the Center for Sexual Health Promotion will join forces with Church & Dwight Co., the makers of Trojan brand condoms, to do in-depth research on how people protect themselves from disease.\nTrojan looked at many different schools across the country and eventually chose IU for its research, partly because of the large number of researchers studying sexual issues at the University, said Michael Reece, director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion. The partnership will investigate why consumers do what they do when it comes to protection.\n“I think that the partnership benefits both of us because we already have similar interests and gives opportunities to expand,” said Debby Herbenick, the center’s associate director.\nThe research will include projects focused on understanding the behavior of consumers based on the design of products, such as how condoms influence consumer behavior, Reece said. \nThe experts conducting the research will be a team of interdisciplinary sexual researchers, Reece said. The team is made up of experts from different IU departments, and includes public health and medical researchers.\n“Here at IU we are extra fortunate to have a range of people who specify in sexual health at the Center for Sexual Health Promotion,” Herbenick said. “We have a lot of strength in that area compared to other schools. We have researchers already available.”\nIn the past, the center, which is part of the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, has looked at issues concerning men’s and women’s opinions about the feel and fit of condoms, Reece said. They have also looked at attitudes toward condoms and how people access them.\n“This research is similar in the sense that the vast majority of our research looks at situational context of relations,” Herbenick said. “Some topic areas are new and some are old. It’s not just whether or not people use a condom to receive pleasure.”\nThe methods of research will vary throughout the program, and the center will discover more in-depth information on the type of research they will be doing as the program goes on. The researchers plan to use daily diaries, Web-based interviews, face-to-face interviews and an array of other methods, said Dennis Fortenberry, a scientist on the research team from the IU School of Medicine.\n“One of IU’s missions is to create new knowledge,” Fortenberry said. “It’s creating new knowledge that can directly benefit others.”\nAccording to a study done by Planned Parenthood in 2005, there were 28,876 new cases of sexually transmitted diseases reported in Indiana ranging from chlamydia, gonorrhea, HIV, hepatitis B and syphilis. The World Health Organization has estimated that 340 million new cases of STDs occur each year.