Dr Carrie Llewellyn, Senior Lecturer in Health Services Research, Division of Public Health and Primary Care at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), will be working with Dr Richard Gilson from the Centre for Sexual Health and HIV Research at University College London, who is leading the project.
Dr Llewellyn, Co-Principal Investigator on the project, said: "Reducing the burden of STIs is a public health priority in the UK and there is international evidence that behavioural interventions can reduce the risk of contracting a new STI among sexual health clinic attendees. The applicability of this evidence to the UK setting is not clear and current practice across sexual health services in the UK is variable.
"The aims of the study are to develop and pilot a package of evidence-based sexual risk reduction interventions for those most at risk, which can be implemented in sexual health services.
"The suite of interventions will be matched to service users' needs and developed alongside a triage method for identifying target groups. Secondly, we will be assessing the feasibility of testing the effectiveness of this individualised package of behavioural interventions in a randomised controlled trial against usual care in a variety of sexual health settings."
The project, funded by the National Institute for Health Research, begins this month (September) and will run for two years.
Dr Llewellyn is also establishing a new University Research Group, the South East Sexual Health Research Group, as part of new developments in sexual health research at BSMS, a school jointly run by Brighton and Sussex universities.