Investigating Risk Factors Affecting the United States Syphilis Rates in Years 1984-2008

Syphilis continues to be a public health concern here in the United States as the syphilis rate has increased from 11.52 per 100,000 cases in 2000 to 15.40 per 100,000 cases in 2008 (CDC Wonder, 2008). This increasing rate of new infections signals a need for effective prevention efforts targeting populations most vulnerable to infection. The purpose of this study is to investigate risk factors that significantly contribute to the syphilis rate in the United States. U.S. syphilis incidence data from 1984 to 2008 was collected and analyzed from a longitudinal database of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Variables such as percent of U.S. population with less than nine years education, U.S. unemployment rate, U.S. per capita alcohol consumption, U.S. per capita adult yearly consumption of manufactured cigarettes, as well as other risk factors were entered into the transfer function model of the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average Model. The structural approach embedded in this model allows the researcher to construct candidate models, eliminate inappropriate models, and to retain the most suitable model. The research findings show that the syphilis rate in the U.S. is significantly and positively associated with the percentage of the population whom has less than nine years of education. This finding is important as it highlights a population in which other health disparities are present. Prevention efforts should be aimed at this demographic in order to reduce the rate of syphilis infections.