[The Call to Action - Contents]
The Surgeon General's Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior
Methodology
In June 1999, the Surgeon General formed a Departmental work group charged with
finding ways to move forward on promoting responsible sexual behavior-one of his
Public Health Priorities and one of the Healthy People 2010 Leading Health
Indicators. After considerable deliberation, the work group concluded that
promoting responsible sexual behavior necessarily included addressing sexual
health.
To this end, in December 1999 a dialogue conference was held in Newport, Rhode
Island, to discuss whether a national strategy to promote sexual health and
responsible sexual behavior might be feasible and what such a strategy would
look like. More than 100 persons, representing a broad range of disciplines and
points of view, attended. Conference participants worked in small groups to
discuss definition issues, action steps, barriers and facilitators, and
strategies to bring together multi-partisan groups and develop common ground on
these issues.
A summary of the Newport dialogue proceedings was subsequently presented to the
Surgeon General and, at his direction, a steering committee of experts was
convened to plan and carry out another conference specifically to develop
recommendations for a Surgeon General's Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health
and Responsible Sexual Behavior. In preparation for the conference, the steering
committee also developed a draft outline for the Call to Action and commissioned
a number of scientific review papers from experts in relevant fields to provide
context for both the document and the conference.
The conference to develop recommendations for the Call to Action was held in
July 2000, at the Airlie Center in Warrenton, Virginia. More than 130 persons
representing 90 organizations--a diverse aggregation of expertise, perspective
and experience--collaborated over three days to develop the conceptual framework
for a national dialogue on sexual health and responsible sexual behavior that
forms the core of this document. As in Rhode Island, conference participants
worked in small groups to discuss issues concerning the value, function and
purpose of sexuality in people's lives, policies and actions to promote sexual
health and responsible sexual behavior, and their recommendations on the draft
outline for the Call to Action, as well as those for advancing a national
dialogue.
The final preparation of the Surgeon General's Call to Action to Promote Sexual
Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior was then undertaken by a team of experts
in the fields of public health, sexuality, and sexual health. The first five
sections of this document, developed to frame and define the issues, were
prepared in part from the scientific reviews written prior to the conference and
the discussions of conference participants in their small groups. The last two
sections, strategies and advancing a national dialogue, are a synthesis of the
work of conference participants in their small groups and were held to standards
of feasibility and support by the scientific literature.
Drafts of this Call to Action were subjected to a rigorous review by a committee
representing the same diversity of expertise, perspective, and experience
evidenced by the participants of both the Rhode Island and Virginia conferences.
Review committee members included the discussion leaders from each small group
and a cross-section of other conference participants to ensure that this
document reflects the views expressed there. Several additional reviewers, who
had attended neither conference, were also added to further maximize the breadth
of participation and input.
