Coming Together for Sexual Health
Coming Together for Sexual Health is a podcast for providers and advocates passionate about health equity and inclusive care. We unpack both the how and the why of improving sexual and reproductive health. From root structural problems to improvements in clinical care, we keep the attention on people most impacted by STIs, HIV, and emerging infectious diseases.
Powered by leading sexual health trainers at UCSF’s California Prevention Training Center, we’re coming together every other week. Join our sex-positive conversations with expert clinicians, public health leaders, and community members wherever you get your podcasts.
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Season 3
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Tammy interviews Jenn Rogers, director of the National Coalition for Sexual Health (NCSH), and Bryce Furness, MD, CDC epidemiologist, about their work developing a new toolkit for primary care providers to use in order to center sexual pleasure, problems, and pride as a part of all wellness visits. The CDC encourages taking sexual history by asking about 5 Ps: partners, practices, past STI history, protection from STIs, and pregnancy intention. The NCSH recently released a video series called “A New Approach to Sexual History Taking,” along with a set of new questions for providers to ask patients in all wellness visit that add a 6th P specifically focusing on patients’ pleasure, pride, and problems.
In this episode, Jenn and Bryce discuss the 6th P, which re-centers patients’ needs, enjoyment of their sexual lives, and social stigma attached to sex. As Jenn elaborates in the episode, “we really thought a satisfying pleasurable sex life is really a key element to sexual health and well-being for most people. So our sexual history taking questions really should reflect that. Bryce uses his specialized experiences providing sexual health care to LGBTQ+ populations to argue that we must recognize health disparities and address stigma around sexual health. Together, they discuss the creation of a freely accessible toolkit for all providers to use. They recognize that the current method of sexual history taking doesn’t incorporate enough discussion of issues such as gender identity, sexuality, shame, and stigma, and how these can affect sexual activity and sexual health.
Resources:
- NCSH Membership Application
- NCSH Health Care Action Group , Communications Actions Group , Policy Action Group
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Resources:
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Zami Hyemingway and Dr. Tatyana Moaton sit down with Tammy to discuss their personal and professional experiences with medical care for transgender folks and medical mistreatment. Together, they reflect on the need for medical providers to become responsive to transgender people’s individual needs and advocate for them in a setting that has often been unsafe for them. Transgender folks need medical providers who will take risks and be true allies. Healthcare providers must rethink care amidst a system in which they occupy positions of power.
Resources:
Last March both guests participated in the conference “See All of Me: The Intersections of Medical Mis/Distrust and its Impact on Transgender Health, HIV Care and Prevention.” Check out the recordings at 2022 Medical Mistrust Symposium:
- Zami Hyemingway
- Tatyana Moaton
- CBA Resources
- U.S. Trans Survey: New survey, open to trans people at any stage, launching 10/19/22
- STD Expert Hour: This training focuses on the sexual health needs of transgender and gender non-conforming people.
- Improving Transgender Services for Trans and Gender Diverse People
- Higher Education Scholarship Opportunities for LGBTQ+ students listed at edumed, petersons, gograd
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Psychotherapist Sam Kendakur talks with Tammy about the intersections of sexual health, mental health, consent, and pleasure. We learn about the unexpected impacts healthcare providers can have on the mental health of their patients, how to reconcile the gray areas and messiness of consent, and how to piece apart our own understandings of sexual pleasure, desire, and attraction. Find the transcript for this episode here.
Trigger warning: sexual trauma
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Resources mentioned:
Download the transcript of this episode.
Also, be sure to follow Mai Fleming on twitter and take another listen to episode 5 on trauma-informed care.
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Stephan Ferris, a Bay Area activist lawyer, received one of the first 40 reported diagnoses of monkeypox after attending a Pride celebration in San Francisco, California. Here, Ferris sits down with host, Tammy Kremer, and Dr. Akanksha Vaidya, a clinical fellow responding to the current health crisis, to share his experience and discuss the need for improving treatment accessibility and provider education concerning a monkeypox diagnosis.
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Courtney Brame, the founder of Something Positive for Positive People (SPFPP), sits down with guest-host Dr. Ina Park to discuss the ongoing need to foster spaces that destigmatize STI diagnoses. In the ninth year of his herpes (HSV-2) diagnosis, Courtney speaks on navigating life with the virus and what drove him to connect with people struggling with mental health issues as a result of their herpes status. What started as informally providing solidarity to those living with herpes, quickly became a podcast and platform for sharing the experiences of those battling societal stigma and self-shaming, creating pathways to disclosing their status and tools that can make waiting for a vaccine more manageable.
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Dante King, author of The 400-year Holocaust: White America’s Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide – and the Revolt Against Critical Race Theory, sits down with guest host Duran Rutledge (capacity building and technical assistance trainer at CAPTC) to reflect on what it means to be a Black person in a country where the colonial legacy of anti-Blackness and conceptions of whiteness and white supremacy have engrained racism into our legal structures, healthcare system, and more.
King offers concrete examples of how these intergenerational and ongoing traumas show up, and examines the roles of empathy, re-education, and narrative in promoting transformation. This conversation illuminates the structures that reinforce America’s blatant anti-Blackness that need to be seen, but so often are not.
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Becca Schwartz, LCSW,speaks about Team Lily, a pregnancy clinic for people experiencing significant barriers to care located at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. We focus on trauma-informed care: how past trauma can show up for patients in the medical setting, ways providers can practice trauma-informed care, and how these issues present and are addressed in San Francisco and specifically at the Team Lily clinic. Note: this episode contains occasional gendered language when talking about pregnant people. We recognize that not all pregnant people identify as women.
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Follow Ina on Instagram and Twitter @inaparkmd for timely (and often entertaining) updates on sexual health. Check out Dr. Park’s book, Strange Bedfellows: Adventures in the Science, History, and Surprising Secrets of STDs.
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Andrew Gurza is an award-winning Disability Awareness Consultant and the Chief Disability Officer and Co-founder of Bump’n, a sex toy company for and by disabled people. They have spoken all over the world on sex, disability and what it means to be a Queer Cripple. They are also the host of Disability After Dark: The Podcast Shining a Bright Light on Disability Stories which won a Canadian Podcast Award in 2021, a Queerty Award, and was chosen as an Honoree at the 2020 Webby Awards.
Join Andrew and Tammy to learn about how Andrew navigates the sexual healthcare system as someone who has complex disabilities.
Season 2
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We speak with Dr. Rosalyn Plotzker about her work with UCSF’s ANCRE Center, the world’s first clinic devoted to anal cancer prevention. Anal cancer incidence is on the rise despite it being associated with HPV, a highly preventable (and extremely common!) virus.
Roz takes us through her work with the clinic, anal cancer screening and risk factors, and debunks many of the stereotypes and stigmas surrounding anal cancer and its causes.
Want to chat with Roz directly? Email her: Rosalyn.Plotzker@ucsf.edu
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If you work in sexual health, you have probably had the experience of becoming the “sexpert” for your friends and family.
In this special episode we have gathered some (but by no means all!) of the questions Dr. Rosalyn Plotzker has received from her various circles to try and demystify at least some of these aspects of sexual health.
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We continue our conversation with Dr. Paul Nash, Associate Professor in Gerontology at USC.
In Part 2 of this discussion about ageism, host Duran Rutledge and Paul dive into the harmful stigma surrounding sex and aging, particularly for people at the intersections of various identities and life experiences.
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Paul currently serves as a Commissioner on the Los Angeles County Commission on HIV, and he consults with the World Health Organization on ageism. He is active in teaching and recently published the book, Critical Questions for Ageing Societies.
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He discusses how capitalism reinforces racism, the creation of anti-blackness through policy, and the systems and structures that have led to white supremacist ideology.
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On this episode, we talk with Dr. Mays about her important work.
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Dana Cropper, previously Director of Education at HealthHIV, recently stepped into the role of Director of the California Prevention Training Center, after Alice Gandelman’s retirement.
In this debut episode of Speaking Frankly season two, we talk with Dana about her new position, why Oprah and Sojourner Truth are two of her heroes, and why she thinks to reduce stigma, we must each engage in deep and ongoing self-reflection “about how we navigate through the world”.
Season 1
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On Jan 21, 2021, the FDA approved Cabenuva, the first once-monthly injectable HIV treatment for adults. Dr. Kelly Johnson, a fellow in infectious diseases and sexually transmitted infections at the University of California, San Francisco, and a physician at San Francisco General Hospital’s Ward 86, explains the implications of this new treatment and how it affects the 1.2 million Americans living with HIV.
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Dr. Monica Gandhi is an infectious disease physician and professor of medicine at UCSF, and the Medical Director of the Ward 86 clinic focused on HIV. She has become a trusted expert on COVID-19.
She talks with us about the vaccines already being used in the US, and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that was submitted to the FDA for Emergency Use Authorization.
She explains the implications for the one-dose J & J vaccine and when we may finally get back to a little bit of normalcy.
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Dr. Ina Park talks about her new book, Strange Bedfellows, in which she uses science, humor and storytelling to share the untold stories of many common sexually transmitted infections.
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Congenital syphilis is up 900% in California since 2012. UC San Francisco’s Dr. Rosalyn Plotzker speaks with us about CS prevention and treatment and about the complex issues contributing to the spike, like systemic racism.
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Dr. George Rutherford, Professor of Epidemiology at UC San Francisco, talks with us about COVID-19, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and why anti-microbial resistance is the next public health threat.
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We continue our discussion with Lidia Carlton, Director of Community Education at Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley. In this episode she explains the social-emotional component of sex ed, and why sex ed is an ideal place to teach about race and ableism.
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Lidia Carlton, Director of Community Education at Planned Parenthood Pasadena and San Gabriel Valley, speaks with us about the California Healthy Youth Act, which mandates more robust and inclusive sex ed in California. She tells us about the positive results it’s yielded, but why some parents are still concerned about the new curriculum.
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Wanda Jackson, DISTC Trainer/Technical Assistance Specialist, has more than 30 years’ experience in the field of disease investigation and contact tracing. In this episode, she gives us a detailed look at the contact tracing process and explains why compassion, patience, and empathy are so valuable as we face this public health crisis.