Examining the impact of federally-funded syphilis elimination activities in the USA

In 1999, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched a national syphilis elimination plan. Using state-level syphilis incidence data from 1997 to 2005, we found that greater amounts of state-level funding for syphilis elimination in a given year were associated with lower state-level syphilis rates in subsequent years. The findings suggest that federally-funded syphilis elimination activities are having a notable impact on syphilis rates. The recent increases in syphilis in the United States might have been much more pronounced had there been no syphilis elimination activities. Published by Elsevier Ltd.