SEX WORK TOOLKIT

Sex workers, much like the rest of the population, face several health risks, including general health concerns, mental health issues and sexual health issues. Due to lack of access to stigma-free health services and inconsistent funding of public health, sex workers living in poverty, who use substances, or live with mental illness face myriad barriers to adequate healthcare. 

Despite common myths about sex workers being “dirty” or “unsafe” in terms of sexual health and STBBIs, sex workers exercise much better sexual health practices than most sexually active people, and historically helped popularize the preventative use of condoms, PreP and PEP and frequent STBBI testing.(1) Anyone who has many sexual partners is at statistically higher risk for STBBIs, but sex workers are singled out due to stigma. Barriers to sexual health services for sex workers include discrimination within the healthcare system, lack of services in remote and rural areas, pressure from clients, and inflated costs of medication and other preventative/ responsive tools for sexual health. 

The mental health of sex workers may also be affected by the disproportionate level of stress they endure without access to the human and labour rights of people with non-criminalized jobs.

To learn more about sex workers’ health care needs, read our 2023 conference report section “Sex Work and Access to Health Care.” To access sexual health services, visit your local sexual health clinic, or visit https://smartsexresource.com/.

(1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/9011933; Prostitutes prevent AIDS : a manual for health educators / by Priscilla Alexander. San Francisco, CA, California Prostitutes Education Project, c 1988.