3 ways charities can improve sexual health awareness

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Sexual health awareness and challenging the stigma around sexual health is a topic I care deeply about. It’s hard not to feel like my school sex education failed me.

Not that it isn’t important to learn how to put on a condom or understand how easily STIs can spread through unprotected sex. But growing up gay, my sex education was irrelevant to me at best and shame-inducing at worst – from a curriculum that pretends everyone learning it is straight to teachers still talking about HIV as if it were a death sentence in 2012.

As an adult, I face a new sexual health landscape that no one in 2012 could have prepared me for. As I write this blog, it has now been two years since my first dose of the Mpox vaccine. Scientific advancements such as PrEP and its access via the NHS has significantly reduced the risk of HIV infection, making the 2030 target of no new HIV infections in the UK significantly more achievable. The rise of antibiotic-resistant shigella presents new(-ish) risks to, in particular, men who have sex with men.

And not even one of these facts I learned about through governmental broadcasts or formal sex education. I learned all of this through other LGBTQ+ people with a tad more knowledge than me, but the same passion for talking openly about sexual health and raising awareness.

Not everyone can rely on their peer network. How can the charity sector improve awareness of sex health issues? To commemorate Sexual Health Awareness Week 2024, I want to discuss the charity sector’s role in sexual health awareness and enabling communities to access sexual health services.

In particular, three key ways charities can help: centring lived experience, giving government the data to influence policy, and helping to ‘bridge the gap’ with government.

1. Centre lived experience

My experiences of sex education are unfortunately shared. Government research on experiences of sex education found that in response to the question “how useful was the Sex and Relationships Education you received at school in preparing you for adult life and your own relationships?”, 1 in 5 young people answered “not useful at all”. This increases to 25% for young people with a disability, and 35% for young people who identified as gay or lesbian.

As more and more charities realise the value of lived experience, including those in sexual health, charities have greater opportunity to produce messaging around sexual health that resonates with these communities. One of the best examples I have seen of this comes from Positive East’s information page on Mpox.

It encourages vaccination with clear information and inclusive illustrations. But crucially, it doesn’t shame people who might have Mpox symptoms – giving them practical advice on still achieving sexual satisfaction while keeping everyone safe.

Positive East’s messaging is a great example of how to normalise conversations around sex. It steers clear of prudishness (while still being somewhat euphemistic) and doesn’t attempt to pathologise casual sex.

It’s messaging like this that enables a healthy and open approach to sexual health, and it’s Positive East’s understanding of the communities they work with – stemming from centring their lived experience – that makes this messaging so effective.

How effective? In 2022, there were a total of 3,732 confirmed cases of Mpox in the UK. Between 2023 and May 2024, there were just 220, no doubt thanks to high rates of vaccination among men who have sex with men.

2. Give government the data to influence policy

A recent government inquiry into the prevalence of STIs among young people echoed the importance of lived experience in informing the response to high STI rates:

We want young black women to be designing the messages they want. We want young gay men to be designing the messages they want. We want all young people engaged in sex and relationships education to be designing the messages.

– Dr Claire Dewsnap, President of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV

Charities should be influencing government policy in this way.

They understand the communities they work with better than government – they can use this to create policy asks that centre their communities’ needs.

Having that greater understanding of the communities they work with allows for policy asks that centre the communities’ needs.

Equally, being non-partisan, the charity sector can undertake research independent of the government (and the government’s natural biases towards government policy). Charities can look at the evidence to establish what is/isn’t working, and make recommendations.

One recent example is Terrence Higgins Trust’s recent “mystery shopper” research. This uncovered a lack of services able to provide appointments within the 48-hour window recommended by the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV.

This research is additionally informed by Terrence Higgins Trust’s understanding of contemporary trends in sexual behaviour, such as casual, unprotected sex, and consequently the need to provide services regardless of symptomatic status.

3. Help to ‘bridge the gap’ with government

At NPC, we often talk about how philanthropy ‘bridges the gap’. This includes being able to take risks to discover what has best impact for the communities with which the sector works, and supporting initiatives that the government is unable to prioritise. We also often talk about how the government and sector should best be working together. This is equally true for sexual health charities.

With sexual health services across the country facing increased demand, the testing and prevention services of sexual health charities like Terrence Higgins Trust, Positive East, and TVPS help to ensure that at-risk communities are still able to access the support they need.

Charities can also help bridge inequalities in access to NHS-funded sexual health services. We know that for all types of care, 13% of LGBTQ+ people have avoided medical care for fear of discrimination. We also know this rate is even higher for LGBTQ+ people from ethnic minority communities. With this level of fear across healthcare in general, sexual health charities are even more vital in their ability to reach communities who are at risk due to the inaccessibility of traditional sexual health services.

But the crucial work of sexual health charities in this area is not a pass for our government to be complacent. Increased funding for sexual health services, making these services accessible to all, and a sex education curriculum that is relevant are all necessities for reducing the risk of STI spread and meeting the 2030 target of no new HIV cases in the UK.

To help make this happen, sexual health charities can: