26 March 2026

What first shaped your interest in sexual and reproductive health, and how did that shape the direction of your career?  

I applied to Medical School during my first postdoctoral Fellowship in Stanford University where I witnessed the then-untreatable HIV/AIDS epidemic and its impact on men who have sex with men (MSM) in San Francisco. My PhD was in neuropharmacology and the post-doctoral fellowship was in memory and learning, so I thought that I would gravitate towards Neurology. However, thanks to my clinical tutor Dr Mark Mendelson in Cambridge University and his passion for infectious disease, I decided to pivot.  

When you look at infectious diseases in the UK and globally – it is Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) that are the most interesting in terms of their number, spread, pathology, and antibiotic/antiviral resistance and the challenge to manage them. Eleven STIs are diagnosed every second. 

Over the years, what are some of the most significant changes you've witnessed in sexual and reproductive health practice and public understanding? 

There have been so many changes. Let me give you some of the highlights. When I started medical school in 1995, HIV/AIDS was a death sentence for the majority of patients. Now it is a chronic treatable viral illness. At the time when I started training in GenitoUrinary Medicine in 2005, sexual health and reproductive health were separate services, and now they are fully integrated.   

During my training the number and breadth of internet-applications has gone up exponentially and the rise of dating apps in 2009 transformed the ‘dating’ scene. Over the last five years we have seen the rise of STI prevention strategies including PrEP (to reduce the risk of HIV), vaccinations (against Hepatitis A & B, Human Papillomavirus, MPox and gonorrhoea), and DoxyPEP (to reduce the risk of syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhoea). The latter initiatives are really welcome since gonorrhoea is at an all time high in the UK and the last time that syphilis was at the current levels was in 1947. 

Many people would describe you as a pioneer in sexual and reproductive health work - what has that journey felt like from your perspective? 

In 2006 I was a Harkness / Health Foundation Fellow and also read a Masters in Public Health (MPH) at Harvard University. During this stimulating 18 months I was investigating why some US states over a decade (1995-2005) were able to prevent AIDS through early diagnosis and the provision of effective antiretroviral treatment, whilst others had AIDS diagnoses flatlined or rose over this time. The states that were unable to prevent AIDS had recent sodomy laws, lacked needle exchange programs, and had smaller formularies with medications that were accessible for the poor.   

Health and Human Rights through the lens of HIV/AIDS, STIs, and reproductive health is fascinating to unpick. I was going to focus my Masters of Public Health studies on this; however, thanks to Roberta Gianfortoni, who was an insightful student advisor, I pivoted to data analytics.  

When I cross-registered at the Harvard Business School and MIT during the end of the Masters of Public Health, I realised that the internet, new diagnostics, and growing digitisation were going to transform healthcare.  On my return to the UK I finished my training and started working as a Consultant in Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust (NHS FT). Some of the notable changes I had the pleasure of leading on included seven day opening at Burrell Street Sexual Health.  

I also worked with a great team at SH:24 to developed home testing and online contraception  that complemented our clinics and my ‘side hustle’ SXT provides anonymous partner notification so that partners can be alerted of their risk, then find a local appropriate service and book themselves in for testing. The latter social enterprise continues to grow and now we have devised a way to support clinics to simply focus on treating patients with STIs and members of their sexual network. The provision of targeted STI prevention services to these individuals has the potential to amplify the public health impact of services and reduce the epidemics in the UK. 

How have you been working within KHP to ensure high-quality education and training in sexual and reproductive health is shared across today's workforce? 

Dr Rudiger Pitroff, King’s College Hospital NHS FT, approached me with the idea of taking services to the most in need and vulnerable members of the community. To give one example - the provision of long-acting reversible contraception to a woman with severe mental illness (SMI) is probably one of the most impactful interventions we can deliver. It enables the woman to focus on her mental health recovery.   

Teaming up with Elana Covshoff, Rudi set up SHRINE (Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights Inclusion and Empowerment). The service had the focus of delivering sexual and reproductive healthcare to people with SMI using a human rights perspective.   

During the SHRINE project it was clear that we needed to train up more members of the nursing team to delivery high quality sexual and reproductive healthcare care to patients with SMI. Now the project has evolved. Dulcie Woods [Matron] is training alongside seven South London and Maudsley NHS FT colleagues to provide sexual and reproductive healthcare services directly within mental health in and outpatient care.   

A special thank you goes to my colleague Dr Annette Twaites, who is working with sexual and reproductive healthcare colleagues to ensure that this first cohort from South London and Maudsley NHS FT can be trained as quickly as possible. 

What message would you give to new healthcare professionals who want to champion sexual and reproductive health and help shape its future? 

Sexual and reproductive health is both fascinating to work in and really rewarding to deliver.   

All the infections we test for can be either cured or effectively managed and helping women to safely control their reproductive health at the same time fits really well together.  The field is full of innovations in service delivery, diagnostics and treatments which is both needed for epidemic control and to reduce the rate of abortions which is currently at an all-time high in England.    

There is a lot of important work to be done in sexual and reproductive health and being able to deliver this directly to patients with SMI has the potential to transform the lives of these patients.