You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
BASHH column
The BASHH Public Health Special Interest Group
  1. Shamela de Silva1,
  2. Gavin Dabrera2,
  3. Helen Ward3
  1. 1West Middlesex Hospital, London, UK
  2. 2UK Field Epidemiology Training Programme, Public Health England, London, UK
  3. 3Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Shamela de Silva, West Middlesex Hospital, Twickenham Rd, London TW7 6AF, UK; shamela.desilva{at}wmuh.nhs.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/sextrans-2013-051260

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    There are few medical specialties as closely allied to public health as genitourinary medicine (GUM). From their earliest beginnings, when clinics were established to tackle the burden of sexually transmitted infections (STI) in the population,1 GUM physicians have been at the forefront of improving health at the population level.

    While at the point of care STI are principally treated at an individual level, public health issues of transmission risk and contact tracing are routinely considered during consultations. Conversely, the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases directly affects decisions on screening, treatment, postexposure prophylaxis, education and health promotion interventions for individual patients. This has created a unique interdependence between GUM and public health.

    Following the Health and Social Care Bill in 2012,2 we are entering a new era of sexual health provision in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, with the commissioning of genitourinary and contraceptive services sitting within public health at local authority level, while the Health Protection Agency has …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Jackie Cassell

    • Competing interests None.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.