ABSTRACT

A fundamental change has occurred in public health discourse over the last 20 years with the acknowledgement that sexual health is essential to overall health and wellbeing. This chapter examines this phenomenon and traces the origins of this transformation. It focuses in particular on how changes in understandings of sexuality have brought about a reorientation of clinical and professional practice, and how in particular the field of sexology has become transformed so as to engage with progressively broader health concerns.