Since May, we’ve surveyed people who have used our free STI test kit on their experience to see what we can improve. Here’s what they told us…
Increasing performance, reducing cost: perspectives from the new sexual health landscape
Meet the team: Mollie
Mollie Courtenay is our service designer and researcher. She divides her time between SH:24 and Mindwave Ventures (doing some very cool projects in mental health, check them out). She's been with SH:24 since its early days and has seen lots of changes and achievements - let's get to know her a bit better...
How can we avoid making emergency contraception into a panic?
Emergency contraception made the headlines this week as newspapers revealed that the morning after pill is being sold on eBay for as little as £5. Although the coverage is welcomed, it fails to explore the complexities behind a woman’s decision to choose this risky solution. It also neglects to discuss alternative, safer options for access to emergency contraception.
Life after live
Our impact: latest SH:24 news and data
A lot has happened since our last data round-up in October - we celebrated our first birthday in March and we’ve now processed over 10,000 orders. We’re really excited about the potential of the data we’ve gathered. Our research team are hard at work on a randomised control trial that should tell us some more about our users’ behaviour but this is what we’ve been able to learn from the data we’ve looked at so far.
SH:24 goes national!
Happy Birthday to us - an eventful year
A structured start-up?
Back in November 2013 I wrote a piece about our team; musing over fancy words like multi-disciplinary, collaborative and holistic. A full 26 months later, I thought I’d take a fresh look and see how it’s grown, how it works and why.
Meet the Team: Jess
This week we’d like to introduce our Graduate Business Associate, Jess Bolton. In true start-up up style, Jess works across a lot of our operations, from looking out for new partnership opportunities and going to events about new sexual health services to working on our communications and running stands at colleges and universities. Let’s find out a bit more about her...
Contraception to your door
Just in time for Christmas US company, Nurx, launched an app dubbed the ‘Uber of contraception’ (or birth control, as they call it over there). In a country where womens’ reproductive health services have been somewhat under attack, the app has been heralded as a cost-effective solution to the lengthy process of getting contraception in the States. Here in the UK we're developing our very own online contraception service.
#Hellomynameis....Sarah Cox, our new nurse
SH:24 response to Guardian article: 'Cuts to sexual health services will lead to STI 'explosion', warn experts'
Sexual health made headlines yesterday as shadow public health minister, Andrew Gwynne claimed in The Guardian that the Labour Party’s analysis had found as much as £40 million could be cut from local councils’ sexual health budgets and that this would have a consequent effect on (already increasing) STI rates. This analysis doesn’t take into account the opportunity for online STI testing services to deliver efficiency savings and improve access to STI testing through remote home testing.
The power of text
Let's talk about EsSEX
Tempted as we were to name our blog after a certain popular reality TV series, we couldn’t resist taking inspiration from Salt-N-Pepa again (as we have done with our Twitter hashtag #letstalkaboutsex). So enough hinting - we’re proud to say SH:24 has been successful in a partnership bid to deliver an integrated sexual health service in Essex.
Emergency Self Care
Communicating contraceptive choice
We’re having a little fanfare moment today as our contraception information and support pages have this week gone live. To put in context why we’ve done this work, we invited King’s College Hospital’s HIV, sexual health and contraception doctor, Dr. Verity Sullivan to write this week’s blog on her experiences with working with women and contraception...