Current status: Answered by Maree Todd on 17 January 2023
To ask the Scottish Government what work it has undertaken with stakeholders to support and develop research projects to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on sexual health and blood borne virus service users and providers, and what research projects it has undertaken and/or supported in this regard.
Through Reset and Rebuild - sexual health and blood borne virus services: recovery plan, published in August 2021, the Scottish Government provided an additional £0.5m of funding to assist sexual health and blood borne virus services to begin recovery from the covid-19 pandemic.
Amongst the numerous projects funded through the Recovery Plan was the SHARE project launched by HIV Scotland, further details of which can be found here:
https://www.hiv.scot/stories/share-study-launch .
In addition, the Scottish Government has supported the Conundrum project, which was designed to understand factors shaping young people’s experiences of contraception, and provided insight into how young people’s access to condoms and contraception was disrupted during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Details of the project can be found here: University of Glasgow - Schools - School of Health & Wellbeing - News - CONUNDRUM project .
Understanding the impact of the pandemic will require on-going support, and it is expected that the next iteration of the Sexual Health and Blood Borne Viruses Framework, which will be published this year, will continue this work.