Sexual Health & HIV Policy eBulletin is relaunched with support from coalition of SRH organisations

The April issue is out today and we are delighted to announce that a coalition of key national organisations, professional bodies and charities working in the SRH sector have joined forces with FSRH to formally support the eBulletin.

The coalition – currently comprising of FSRH, British Association for Sexual Health & HIV (BASHH), British Medical Journal (BMJ), Faculty of Public Health (FPH), Family Planning Association (FPA), Brook, National AIDS Trust (NAT), Terrence Higgins Trust (THT), NAM aidsmap and the Sex Education Forum (SEF) – will work together to ensure the eBulletin not only remains a ‘go-to’ source of reliable policy information, but also continues to give a voice to those working in the sector.

As many loyal readers will know, this eBulletin was first launched in 2012 as a short-term resource to keep those working locally up to date with key policy developments that followed changes introduced by the Health and Social Care (HSC) Act and to provide regular national and local stakeholder perspectives on the impact of these changes. Six years on, the sexual and reproductive health (SRH) sector continues to grapple with the consequences of such radical change alongside increasing service demands and ongoing funding pressures. Earlier this week, key national SRH and public health stakeholders sent an open letter to Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Health & Social Care, calling for a strengthened SRH mandate at local authority level and enhanced accountability mechanisms to ensure public health regulations made under the Health & Social Care Act in 2012 work more effectively now and in the future. The eFeature this month covers the detail of the letter to Jeremy Hunt, and you can read it here.

Items to look out for in this April issue include: the recent BMA report showing that sexual and reproductive health services have been amongst the worst-hit by cuts to public health funding; the new Prioritisation Framework tool from Public Health England (PHE) to support evidenced-based spending decisions across public health programmes; the new NHS England commissioning guidance and training standards for Female Genital Mutilation (FGM); the Invisible No Longer report from the Sophia Forum and THT on what action is needed to ensure women living with HIV are heard, counted for and no longer left behind in the progress made around HIV and the ground-breaking news that Ealing Council is to introduce the first UK ‘safe’ zone around one of its local abortion clinics from the end of this month.

Read the April issue here. If you would like to receive the next issues directly in your e-mail inbox, please subscribe.