Inaugural National SHA Online meeting 29th July 2026

Inaugural National SHA Online meeting 29/7/26

On Wednesday 29th August, we had the inaugural National on line meeting of SHAs.

We advertised the meeting through SSHA and BASHH although membership of either was not necessary.

This was set up by Jara Phattey (Sexual Health Adviser rep to BASHH Board) and Ceri Evans (President of SSHA) as we had never attempted to have a national gathering apart from our SSHA yearly conferences.

We had an amazing turnout – 60 SHAs attended from all over the UK – it was wonderful to have a gathering of “our people”!

The main agenda item was a presentation by Jara Phattey Lead Sexual Health Advisor/ Team Manager, Umbrella Sexual Health Services, Birmingham)

Jara presented a Briefing Paper: Scoping Exercise on Sexual Health Advising Models in UK Services. The scoping exercise will examine the range of Sexual Health Adviser (SHA) workforce models currently in use across UK integrated sexual health services, with the aim of informing future workforce development, service design, and commissioning requirements. This will take place over the next 12 months.

The plan for the Scoping Exercise was very well received by those at the meeting, and some SHAs shared with us their frustrations with their situation and the role (or non-role!) of SHAs in their clinics. It is a very big challenge to roll this out, and we have had a number of people come forward to volunteer to be on the working party – please contact Jara.Phattey@uhb.nhs.uk or ceri.evans4@nhs.net if you feel you can help in anyway.

We had great feedback (see comments below) and it felt that people really appreciated being part of the meeting and feeling “seen”. As it was so successful we will look at running these sessions throughout the year -if you are not a BASHH or SSHA Member please keep an eye on the SSHA website for details of upcoming meetings.