Measuring and evaluating sexual health in the era of digital health: challenges and opportunities
Jo Gibbs A * , Danielle Solomon
A , Louise Jackson B , Saiqa Mullick C , Fiona Burns A D and Maryam Shahmanesh A E F
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Institute for Global Health, University College London, London, UK.
B Heath Economics Unit, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
C Wits RHI, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
D Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
E Africa Health Research Institute, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
F University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Sexual Health - https://doi.org/10.1071/SH22068
Submitted: 15 April 2022 Accepted: 23 July 2022 Published online: 16 August 2022
© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Abstract
Digital health has become increasingly embedded within sexual health service delivery and is now an established part of the user journey. It can support the provision of information and access to care across the sexual health continuum and facilitate the delivery of differentiated care with tailored and layered interventions that meet an individual’s and target populations’ need. However, despite advances in digital health, many challenges remain in the measurement and evaluation of sexual health. Reaching underserved populations, ensuring that both the intervention and the outcomes being measured are appropriate, and consistent collection of data (across settings and over time) are all potential obstacles to a full realisation of these opportunities. In order for digital health to improve sexual health and wellbeing, and reduce morbidity, the following need to occur: (1) ensure the necessary digital, health care, laboratory, legal and regulatory and surveillance infrastructure is in place to provide access to those with a sexual health need; (2) empowerment of end users and communities to take control of their own health through engagement in the development of interventions, and to ensure that outcomes of importance are measured; (3) tailoring and layering of interventions to provide equitable access to care; (4) integrating the digital ecosystem with the existing healthcare and external ecosystem; (5) measure and evaluate the unmet needs, gaps and quality of the experience, taking a realist evaluation approach; and (6) measure and evaluate the economic and distributional impacts associated with digital services or interventions in sexual health.
Keywords: data, digital, health services, internet, online, public health, sexual health, STIs.
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