iPhone and Android apps can help you get a date, come up with a pick up line or find a romantic restaurant on the fly. But protect you from sexually transmitted disease and unwanted pregnancy? There’s now an app for that too: the NYC Condom Finder, created by New York City’s Health Department.
“When the mind turns towards the heart, as in Valentine’s Day, it often ends up turning towards sex. Then you need our product,” Monica Sweeney, assistant commissioner for the health department’s Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control, told CNN.
Using GPS, the app alerts you to the nearest locations that stock the free “NYC Condom.” There are more than 3,000 venues, from restaurants and clubs to health clinics and community organizations, around the city.
NYC’s Health Department has been long known for its innovative and aggressive approach to public health and safe sex. The city has been handing out free condoms since 1971, and the NYC Condom was the first city-branded condom in the United States, created in 2007.
If you don’t have an iPhone or an Android phone and are caught without protection — or money — just dial 311 to find the nearest free prophylactic.