BASHH (British Association for Sexual Health and HIV) recommend moving to online services whenever possible, to minimize face-to-face meetings and crowded waiting rooms in clinics.
SH:24 wins at Guardian Public Service Awards 2018
SH:24 launches ground-breaking online contraception support
New peer-to-peer forum The Pill or What? offers personalised contraception advice with accurate clinical support in the wake of funding cuts to sexual health services.
Event: Thinking with Design for Global Health - 5 December 2018
SH:24 wins royal seal of approval with Queen’s Award for Enterprise
Response to Evening Standard article on oversubscribed sexual health clinics in London
Response to Evening Standard article ('600 people a week turned away from oversubscribed sexual health clinics at one London NHS Trust', 28 January 2018) from Gillian Holdsworth, Managing Director of SH:24:
London urgently needs an online sexual health service that supports and strengthens capacity for the more complex cases to remain in its clinical settings, not one that weakens it through extended delays.
Clinic closures and the surge in turn-aways from sexual health clinics across the capital are a growing concern for us at SH:24. SH:24 has been providing an online STI testing service in Lambeth and Southwark for almost three years and we continue to step in across South East London following the delayed launch of the new London-wide digital service, which has been based upon our own award-winning specification.
Our model, co-designed with service users, promotes self-management of sexual health, self-sampling for STIs with treatment and/or clinic referral as appropriate and easy access to online clinical support with advice and signposting on our website.
STI diagnostic rates have fallen in Lambeth and Southwark between 2015/16 and 2016/17 by between 8.5-10% following the introduction of our online sexual health service. We have distributed more than 54,000 home testing kits across these boroughs in the last three years for STIs such as chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis and HIV and there is currently a return rate of 80%.
We currently dispatch 1,600 orders on average per week. Last month we launched our new nationwide paid-for service, Fettle, in parallel with the free services we are commissioned by NHS Trusts and local authorities to provide in parts of south east London and other UK regions. This is in direct recognition of the high demand that continues to remain unmet for fast, anonymous and high-quality digital STI testing.
As a not-for-profit social enterprise, we want to see a sexual health service in London that is fit for purpose and ensures no-one is turned away.
Help us change contraceptive conversations
Joining the SH:24 #SHforAll twitter chat
Delivering sexual health online, leaving no one behind
Changing contraceptive conversations
Meet the team: Stuart
Using technology to provide choice in STI testing
SH:24 and collaborators win a Digital Leaders award
Our team had a fantastic evening at the DL100 awards ceremony last week, filled with champagne, comedy and delicious foods. It was made only better by the news that we’d won the award for Cross-Sector Collaboration of the Year! The winner was decided half by the judges and half by a public vote so we want to say a huge thank you to the panel and to everyone who took the time to vote for us.