Background

November 2015 saw the launch of the UK Faculty of Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare’s (FSRH's) vision for sexual and reproductive healthcare (SRH).1 This was the culmination of a process that began in 2011, when the FSRH's President, Chris Wilkinson, initiated a process of change. Recognising that the FSRH, as the UK’s largest professional membership organisation working in sexual health, needed an overhaul of its governance, structure and function, he commissioned former President, Alison Bigrigg, to review how the Faculty was working and to set out where it should aim to be by 2020. Based on interviews with a wide range of people closely involved in the FSRH and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), Bigrigg set out key ambitions for the coming 10 years.2 With 5 years to go until 2020, it seems timely to consider what progress has been made and what challenges remain.

Past progress and future challenges

Established in 1993, the founders of what was then called the Faculty of Family Planning, foresaw that ‘family planning’ was evolving into a more holistic and recognised area of healthcare and that ‘SRH’, as it later become known, needed its own criteria, skills and requirements for continuing education and further recognition. Predominantly established as an educational body, the FSRH has been at the forefront of the development of training, qualifications, standards and clinical guidance in UK SRH, as well as running events for its members and producing a quarterly academic journal.

Bigrigg’s report2 recognised …