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BASHH column
What do young people want? (from a sexual health service)
  1. Harriet LeVoir1,
  2. Eleanor Cochrane2,
  3. Jane Ashby3,
  4. Sophie Herbert4
  1. 1 Barts Health NHS Trust, Ambrose King Centre/Grahame Hayton Unit Barts Health NHS Trust Royal London Hospital, London, UK
  2. 2 Cardiff University School of Medicine, Cardiff, UK
  3. 3 Sexual Health and HIV, Central and North West London NHS Trust, London, UK
  4. 4 GUM/HIV, Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Kettering, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Sophie Herbert, GUM/HIV, Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Kettering, Northamptonshire, UK; sophieherbert{at}nhs.net

https://doi.org/10.1136/sextrans-2022-055545

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    The COVID-19 pandemic challenged us to rethink and reconfigure the services we provide to our patients. Traditional open-access, walk-in clinics were no longer possible, and early on in the pandemic, in mid-2020, it was identified that there was a disproportionately larger effect on young people (YP) accessing sexual health services compared with those aged 18 and over.1 Novel ways aimed at maintaining access of YP into services included WhatsApp for contact to clinic, telephone triage and safeguarding assessment, video calls, postal kit testing, and allowing specific populations access to face-to-face appointments in clinic.

    In June 2021 BASHH members were surveyed via the clinical thermometer survey about YP’s engagement with sexual health (SH) services. The results of the survey revealed that among BASHH survey respondents, despite the gradual reopening of face-to-face clinic services, the number of YP accessing sexual health services remained below prepandemic levels; 60% of …

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    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Anna Maria Geretti

    • Twitter @EllieCochraneX

    • Collaborators Adolescent Special Interest Group BASHH.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.