Monkeypox, UK Healthcare, grad students, and the need for a living wage
Patient Balance: 157.35
The above amount represents the cost charged to me for office visits related to sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing under the University of Kentucky 2020-2021 graduate student healthcare plan. Graduate students at UK are regularly paid below $20,000 per year for work that includes a significant portion of the university’s undergraduate teaching. While the past year saw a major victory for UKY employees in the achievement of a $15 minimum wage for all campus workers, a true living wage for all UK employees has not been achieved. One unaddressed aspect of this ongoing process is providing a healthcare plan with comprehensive and affordable care to all university students and employees, including sexual healthcare.
As monkeypox continues to spread across the country and the world, many media outlets are wrongly characterizing the virus as an STI or as a disease that is only infecting gay men and other LGBTQIA people. The World Health Organization disproves this narrative, describing the virus’ means of transmission as close skin contact including nonsexual contact, surface transmission, and via respiratory droplets. Coming atop the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of monkeypox further emphasizes the systemic failures of the American medical system including high costs for basic treatment and the stigmatization of LGBTQIA people. The University of Kentucky’s healthcare system is not exempt from these issues.
Many college students have sex. This alone emphasizes the critical need for comprehensive sexual healthcare for all UK students and employees. Some of these systems are already in place at UKY, including some provision of free HIV testing in recent years. However, the University of Kentucky’s student health insurance remains precisely $157.35 away from financial accessibility. Further, the University Health Service website continues to advocate unrealistic standards of abstinence which fail to provide effective sex education, family-planning, or STI prevention. As the United Campus Workers of Kentucky and the University of Kentucky graduate community continue to push the university to provide a living wage and affordable comprehensive healthcare, sexual healthcare remains a necessary point to address.
The spread of monkeypox, driven by its misattribution as an STI that only affects sexually active LGBTQIA people, will further exacerbate the effects that UKY students, employees, and Lexingtonians must bear. Even before recent pandemics, the CDC was reporting record numbers of reported STIs with the highest rates of new infection coming from college age students. Many of these STIs are curable. All are treatable. However, treatment cannot begin until after the financial hurdles of testing have been crossed. Another school year is about to begin. The White House has just declared monkeypox a public health emergency.
The need for a true living wage for all UKY employees and for affordable and comprehensive healthcare coverage for the entire university community is urgent. Many, including the United Campus Workers of Kentucky, have already been pushing for these changes. The question now is how many more public health crises — and how many more negatively impacted students, staff, and faculty — will it take before UKY commits more of its 5.6 billion dollar annual operating budget toward ensuring the health, safety, and financial wellbeing of its campus community and of Lexington as a whole.
Ivy Faye Monroe is an educator and academic in Lexington, where she teaches at the Living Arts and Science Center and Eastern Kentucky University.
