About HealthTestExpress
Making private STD testing easier to find, understand, and access.
HealthTestExpress was built on a simple belief: that access to clear, accurate sexual health information should not be a privilege. We organize trusted STD testing options by state, city, and test type - so anyone, anywhere in the US, can understand the process before they decide what to do next.
Our story
This started in the clinic. Not in a boardroom.
I have been working in sexual health for over fifteen years. For most of that time, the hardest part of the job was not the clinical side - it was watching people delay care they clearly needed, not because they did not want help, but because they did not have enough information to take the first step. Patients would come in after weeks of uncertainty. Some after months. Not because they were not worried. Because they were not sure what testing actually involved, whether it would be private, what would happen if something came back positive. The fear of the unknown kept them waiting. And waiting, in sexual health, has real consequences.
At the CDC, where I spent seven years as a Senior Public Health Consultant, I saw this problem from a systems level. We had the epidemiological data. We knew which communities carried the highest burden of undiagnosed infections. We knew that undiagnosed STDs do not just affect individuals - they drive transmission, they complicate pregnancies, they create long-term health consequences that show up years later. And we knew that education and access to clear information were among the most effective tools we had. Not just access to labs. Access to the kind of plain-language, trustworthy explanation that helps someone move from worry to action. That gap was always there. We talked about it in meetings, in hallways, over coffee with colleagues who had been in the field for decades. Everyone agreed it existed. Fewer people had a concrete plan to close it.
Before the CDC, I spent four and a half years as Clinic Director at Atlanta Wellness Center, running a full-service sexual health clinic day to day. That role taught me things that no public health report can capture. I saw how a patient's willingness to come back for a follow-up appointment depended almost entirely on how they felt during their first visit - whether they felt judged, whether they understood what was happening, whether the person in front of them treated their question like a reasonable thing to ask. The clinical infrastructure was there. The labs were there. What made the difference, over and over, was whether the person sitting across from me felt informed enough to trust the process. I carried that into every conversation I had at the CDC, and eventually into this project.
HealthTestExpress grew out of those fifteen years of conversations. With colleagues at the University of Georgia, where I trained. With nurses and counselors I worked alongside at Atlanta Wellness Center. With public health researchers at the CDC who spent their careers studying why people do not seek care when they need it. The answer, almost every time, came back to the same thing: people do not act on health concerns they do not fully understand. Give someone accurate, clear, judgment-free information, and they are far more likely to take the step they have been putting off. Withhold it, or make it hard to find, and you are not just failing them - you are actively contributing to worse population health outcomes. That is not a neutral position. We decided it was not one we were willing to accept.
Since we launched HealthTestExpress, something has happened that I did not fully anticipate: people reach out. Not to book appointments - we are not a clinic. They write to tell us that an article we published helped them finally understand a result they had been sitting with for weeks. They message to say they shared a guide with a friend who was too embarrassed to ask a doctor directly. Colleagues in sexual health forward our pages to their own patients as supplementary reading. That feedback means more to me than any traffic metric. It tells me that the information is landing the way it was intended - not as content, but as a genuine resource that helps people make sense of something that matters to their health. That is the only reason this site exists.
We are a small team, and we are growing deliberately. Every person who contributes to HealthTestExpress - whether as a writer, a reviewer, or an advisor - shares the same starting point: a genuine belief that better public access to accurate sexual health information produces better health outcomes. Not just for individuals, but at a population level. If you work in sexual health, public health, or clinical medicine, and you want to contribute to something that reaches people at the moment they actually need this information, we would like to hear from you.
MEET THE MEDICAL DIRECTOR
The physician behind every article on this site.
Dr. Michael Thompson has spent his entire career in sexual health medicine - first as a clinician, then as a public health strategist, and now as the medical lead behind HealthTestExpress. Over fifteen years, he has worked at every level of this field: treating patients one-on-one, directing a full-service sexual health clinic, advising the federal government on national prevention strategy, and now building the kind of public resource he always believed should exist.
Dr. Thompson earned his medical degree from the University of Georgia, where he developed an early focus on infectious disease and preventive medicine. After completing his training, he joined Atlanta Wellness Center as Clinic Director of Sexual Health Services - a role he held for four and a half years. There, he oversaw all clinical operations for a high-volume STD testing and treatment clinic in Atlanta, managed a team of physicians, nurses, and counselors, and personally designed rapid screening protocols that reduced patient wait times and improved follow-up rates across the board. It was in that role that he developed the conviction, reinforced by thousands of patient interactions, that information is clinical infrastructure. When patients understand what is happening - what the test involves, what the result means, what comes next - outcomes improve. When they do not, they delay. And delay, in sexual health, carries a measurable cost.
In 2014, Dr. Thompson joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as a Senior Public Health Consultant, a position he held for seven years. Working out of Atlanta, he contributed to the development and implementation of national STD prevention strategies, led community health outreach initiatives across Georgia and the Southeast, and collaborated with state and local health departments on reducing rates of undiagnosed infection in underserved populations. His work at the CDC gave him a systems-level view of the same problem he had seen in the clinic: the gap between available testing infrastructure and actual patient uptake was consistently widest where clear, accessible health information was hardest to find.
Dr. Thompson left the CDC to build HealthTestExpress - a project that draws directly on everything he learned across both roles. He serves as Medical Director and lead reviewer, personally reviewing every article and guide published on the site against current CDC and NIH standards before it goes live. He also sets the editorial direction of the platform, ensuring that the information published here reflects not just what is clinically accurate, but what patients actually need to know to make confident, informed decisions about their sexual health.
EDITORIAL STANDARDS
We treat every article like a patient is reading it alone,
at night, trying to make a decision.
Sexual health is not a topic where vague or outdated information is harmless.
A person reading one of our articles may be deciding whether to get tested, how to interpret a result, or how to talk to a partner. That context shapes everything about how we write. Every article on HealthTestExpress is grounded in current guidance from the CDC, the NIH, and relevant US specialty bodies.
Every page is reviewed by Dr. Michael Thompson before it goes live, and reviewed again when guidelines change. We write in plain language - not because we underestimate our readers, but because clarity is what actually helps people act. We cite our sources, we date our reviews, and we do not publish anything we would not be comfortable handing to a patient in a clinical setting.
Want to write or review for HealthTestExpress? We would love to hear from you.
HealthTestExpress is built on the belief that better information leads to better health outcomes - and we cannot do that alone. We are looking for clinicians, nurses, public health professionals, and experienced health writers who share that conviction and want to contribute their knowledge to a resource that genuinely reaches people when they need it most.
Contributing to HealthTestExpress is pro bono work. We are transparent about that. What we offer in return is the opportunity to put your expertise in front of an audience that is actively trying to understand a topic you know deeply - and the knowledge that what you write will be held to real clinical standards before it goes anywhere near a reader. We do not publish filler. If your name goes on something here, it will be something worth putting your name on.
We are open to writers, medical reviewers, editors, and people who want to support the project in other ways. If you have a background in sexual health, infectious disease, public health, or clinical medicine, and you want to be part of what we are building, send us a message. Tell us who you are, what you do, and how you think you could contribute. We read everything.
Apply to contribute
Send us a short message introducing yourself - who you are, your background, and how you would like to contribute. We are open to writers, reviewers, editors, and anyone who wants to support the mission.