One element of GP involvement in sexual health services which I think has been missed from the report by the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health is their potential role in practice based commissioning.

This could play a much bigger part in service redesign for sexual health, particularly by ensuring far more joined-upness between general practice, sexual health clinics, secondary care, social care and private sector providers.

Yes, we need better incentives and much better training. And certainly another key prerequisite would be the provision of timely and accurate benchmark information fed back to practices. But GPs are in a unique position to take a holistic view of sexual health services and their input through commissioning could really help glue the many quite complex pathways together.

Alan Maryon-Davis, president, Faculty of Public Health

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