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Background
Julia is an associate professor in Primary Care at the UCL eHealth Unit, and a specialty doctor in community sexual health in South East London.
Research
Julia's programme of research focuses on sexual health:
1. Internet and mobile phone for sexual health promotion
Sexual health promotion is a huge public health challenge, including sexually transmitted infections, HIV, sexual abuse and sexual difficulties. Clinicians and patients may have reservations about raising sexual health problems, and clinical services are very pressurised. The scale of the problem calls for innovations in health promotion and service delivery via new technologies. Julia's research focuses on the development and evaluation of digital technologies for sexual health promotion such as the evidence-based, tailored Contraception Choices website for contraception decision-making: www.contraceptionchoices.org.
This theme also encompasses the design and conduct of online research methods.
2. Defining sexual wellbeing (for intervention design and evaluation) Public health interventions have traditionally defined sexual health in mainly physical terms (e.g. pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection). The WHO concept of sexual wellbeing goes beyond physical health to include social and psychological wellbeing. This broader definition more closely reflects the complexity of sexual health and patients' priorities. Julia's research focuses on the conceptual development and practical operationalisation of sexual wellbeing in sexual health intervention design and evaluation.
3. Understanding the complexity of sexual health consultations
Discussions about sexual health may be difficult for patients and for clinicians because of unspoken inferences about patients' sexual behaviour, risk and identity. Advice for clinicians about how to discuss risk reduction in consultation is often quite general, for example to 'avoid being judgemental', but it is not clear how best to approach this. Discourse analysis can help to understand delicate communicative problems, identifying the intricate features of 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' communication.
Teaching
· Sexual health in clinical practice: medical student teaching, NHS staff training
· Sexual health online - workshops for clinicians and academics
· Primary trainer for the Diploma of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare
· PhD student supervision
· Research methodology: systematic reviews and meta-analyses
· Qualitative Research Methods in Health Research MSc module and short courses - course organiser
Enquiries from prospective students are welcome, on the topics of
· Sexual health
· Defining and measuring sexual wellbeing
· Understanding sexual health consultations
Please follow the link for Publications