Scottish Sexual Health Services: Cinderella Starts Making her Way to the Ball

A central objective of Respect and Responsibility - Scotland's first national sexual health strategy - was to improve sexual health services through developing strong local and national alliances. This chapter by two of Scotland's sexual health clinical leaders, Dr Alison Bigrigg of the West of Scotland Managed Clinical Network and Professor Anna Glasier of NHS Lothian, reviews the resulting organisational arrangements and the key roles given to the NHS in Scotland and their local authority partners to take a holistic view to the Scottish sexual health landscape.

Summarising the previous structures of sexual health care, and the players involved, the chapter charts the shift to a more innovative environment by describing examples of good practice from across Scotland that have resulted from these opportunities, and from the funding that came to local areas through the Strategy. This includes work to support young people in Lothian; innovative developments in the West of Scotland; a managed sexual health clinical network Grampian; an enhanced sexual health role for community pharmacists; a national campaign to raise awareness of long acting reversible contraception (LARC), and partnership working in Dumfries and Galloway.

The sexual health strategy aimed to reduce inequalities in access to sexual health services, and the authors argue that these, and other examples of sexual health care in the 21st century go a long way to improving the previous landscape of sexual health services in Scotland.