April is STD Awareness Month. Many may think such a subject doesn’t involve them, but statistics show that one in every two sexually active people will get an STD by age 25 and most won’t ever know it.

Get Yourself Tested was a campaign designed by MTV and the Kaiser Family Foundation to help bring awareness about STDs and STD prevention to the world.

“MTV has made a sustained commitment to challenging the stigma that prevents countless young people from getting tested for STDs and HIV,” said Jason Rzepka, vice president of MTV Public Affairs in a news release sent on April 9. “We’re proud that GYT has helped drive notable increases in STD testing, but there’s no finish line in this race, and we will continue to do all we can to help our audience make responsible decisions about their sexual health.”

GYT was created as a part of “It’s Your (Sex) Life,” an Emmy and Peabody award-winning public information campaign.

It began in 1997 with the partnering of the Kaiser Family Foundation and MTV. The Kaiser Family Foundation is a large-scale, nonprofit organization that focuses on informing the public on major health issues in the United States.

“It’s Your (Sex) Life focuses on delaying and reducing sexual activity, talking openly about sexual health issues, using protection and getting tested for HIV and other STDs,” according to the mission statement from the “Its Your (Sex) Life” website.

The GYT Campaign encourages STD testing as an act of pride, not shame, and moves to open up discussions about spreading the word about STDs and the campaign.

This campaign launched in 2009, when the high rate of HIV and STD infections continued despite the high level of awareness. It also is attempting to reach a younger generation of people by using shorthand in a way that is familiar and relatable to them.

Other partners in this campaign include: the American College Health Association, the American Social Health Association, the Internet and STD Center of Excellence and many more. All are committed to raising awareness about STDs throughout the month of April.

“It was kind of awkward when I got myself tested,” said Ryan Peetz, senior in chemical engineering. “But there isn’t really a way to make it less awkward when you go in, but all I had to do was pee in a cup. It wasn’t as bad as everyone made it out to be.”

Doctors have agreed that all STDs are treatable and many of them are completely curable. The tests to determine an STD range from a simple physical examination to a urine or blood sample. But there is no overall tests for STDs; all of them require their own test.

According to the official “Get Yourself Tested” website, the reason people don’t get tested can be as simple as fear.

It is sometimes believed that if you don’t have any physical symptoms then you can’t have an STD, or, if you do have symptoms, they will just go away on their own.

“I’ve never gotten myself tested,” said Wheaton Shroeder, sophomore in bioinformatics and computational biology. “I always believed my partners when they said they had been tested for these things.”