Fast, Private STD Testing Across Charleston With Walk-In Lab Access

Charleston sits in the state with one of the worst STD burdens in the United States — South Carolina ranks in the CDC's top five for chlamydia and top ten for gonorrhea nationally — and Charleston County's STD rates reflect that statewide burden with cases concentrated in the city's historically Black neighborhoods on the peninsula and in North Charleston. The city's booming tourism economy generates millions of visitors annually through the French Quarter, King Street, and the resort beaches of Sullivan's Island and Isle of Palms, sustaining a hospitality workforce that is predominantly young, underinsured, and shift-based whose STD screening engagement is limited by scheduling and cost barriers. The College of Charleston and the Medical University of South Carolina together bring over 25,000 students and medical trainees into a peninsula city of 150,000, concentrating the highest-risk demographic for chlamydia in a dense urban environment. Charleston's rapid gentrification has displaced lower-income Black residents to North Charleston and the surrounding communities while leaving the structural STD disparities they faced unresolved — South Carolina Department of Health data shows the city's Black community bearing a disproportionate share of gonorrhea burden that geography has shifted without eliminating.