Promoting sexual health continually all year round can be both challenging and exhausting. Sometimes a focused flurry of activity can help grab attention where longer campaigns can struggle. That's why Sexual Health Information Month (SHIM) is a campaign to raise awareness around sexual health throughout September.

Run by Durex in partnership with the JLS Foundation, SHIM hopes to engage people attending sexual health services to think about their sexual health and make decisions that will protect them.

Why now?

Many people are returning from holidays, often having caught more than just the sun. Holidays are renowned for evoking risky behaviour, a perception which is supported by survey results:

• 70% of people think different risks are taken over the summer¹

There are also around 2.5m students starting or returning to university in the UK² and celebrating fresher's week, which may well involve them drinking more than they might normally and taking extra risks.

This activity may increase the number of clinic appointments across the country; indeed sexual health appointments peaked after summer last year.³

So what's occurring?

As part of SHIM we will be announcing the availability of Just Love Safe condoms to the NHS and releasing the Just Love Safe Sex Survey results. We are promoting SHIM in clinics by sending out packs of balloons, bunting and posters. To order your promotional pack click here.

Just Love Safe condoms

The Just Love Safe packs of condoms have proved popular with the younger demographic. They will be available to the NHS from October 2011. For more details about ordering the clinic packs, click here to contact your Durex representative.

JLSSS results - Revealing the sexual views and habits of the nation^*

We hope that by showing some of the Just Love Safe Sex Survey (JLSSS) results and shedding light on the sexual views and habits of the nation, people will be encouraged to think twice about having unprotected sex.

During National Condom Week in May the JLSSS was completed by more than 11,000 people aged 16 and above. Durex ran the survey in conjunction with Brook and the JLS Foundation as a follow up to the hugely successful 2009 Great British Sex Survey.

There were many interesting results to come out of the survey, in particular the findings for young people. As shown in the table below, for instance, a greater number of the 16-19 year old demographic had lost their virginity by the age of 16 than previous generations:

Combined with the fact that 43% of the younger age group are now having sex at least once a week¹, it becomes clear that young people in particular need to be kept informed to help them protect themselves.

Looking at the risks

Clearly one of the most important facts to find out is whether people are protecting themselves when they do have sex. While many are taking precautions with new partners, a significant proportion are still taking risks, giving various reasons for not using condoms:¹

• Didn't have any

• Didn't want to use them

• I was too drunk

• We used the withdrawal method

• There's always the morning after pill

For each age group, more than third of those having sex take risks with new partners. This in itself is worrying, but the risks of not using a condom are obviously amplified the greater the number of partners people have.

Looking again at the 16-19 year old age group, 42% have had more than two partners.¹ Of these teenagers, more than a third don’t always use condoms with a new partner.¹ This now paints a clear picture of just how quickly STIs can spread within this demographic.

Is the problem awareness?

Another revealing question was about sex and relationships education (SRE) at school. While most schools do try and put time and resources aside for SRE, it seems people don’t feel they learnt enough:

• Less than 10% of 16-19 year olds felt their SRE was really informative¹

How useful was the Sex & Relationships Education you had at school?1
a) Really informative	9.8%
b) Just the basics	41.4%
c) It could have been better	34.5%
d) I didn't really understand it	2.1%
e) We didn't have any Sex & Relationships Education	10.8%
f) I didn't go to school	1.5%

With these types of figures in mind, we feel that raising awareness, especially amongst the younger demographic holds real value.

We hope that Sexual Health Information Month helps your clinic to engage with your clients. If you would like to order clinic packs of the Just Love Safe condoms, or the SHIM promotion packs, click here to contact your Durex representative.

Article release date: 22nd September 2011