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Culture, health and sexuality

Couple walking At its best, education around blood-borne viruses (BBV) and sexual health is culturally responsive and embedded in a whole-of-life context.

Current public health practice does not always take culture and context into account. For instance, when people ‘couple up' and ‘make love', the biomedical lens of public health sees ‘partner acquisition' and ‘sexual risk-taking'. Where people pierce or tattoo their bodies, or take illicit drugs for pleasure, it perceives ‘transmission routes' and ‘causal factors'.

This poses some tricky questions:

How can health promotion and research practice better articulate culturally diverse meanings around health and sexual practice?
When someone's identity includes overlapping aspects of diversity, such as ethnicity and same-sex attraction, does it increase their vulnerability to poor sexual health?
How can health promotion strategies be tailored to fit with cultural beliefs and practices?

The Culture, Health and Sexuality stream will encourage conversation between researchers, practitioners and community members around these questions. The conversation will involve a wide range of service sectors.