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Introduction
Hi, I'm David Evans, a National Teaching Fellow and Professor in Sexualities and Genders: Health & Well-Being. I've been teaching sex, sexualities & sexual health since 1990. Although fairly widely published, most of my works tend to be in professional (nursing) journals. "Impact" on improving client care is not measured as research papers are!
I was appointed an OBE by Her Majesty The Queen in 2017, for services to nursing & sexual health education; PFHEA (2018) for "strategic leadership in learning and education".
International conference presentations are in video format, at https://drdavidtevanstel.wordpress.com/
ORCID-ID 0000-0001-6874-3845
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 2018 - present
September 2006 - July 2011
September 1996 - January 1998
Education
September 2006 - July 2011
Field of study
- Professional doctorate in education: sexual health learning for nurses in England
September 1996 - January 1998
Field of study
- Social Science Research: Social representations of HIV and AIDS on post registration nurse education
September 1994 - July 1995
Thames Valley University
Field of study
- Applied Research Methods
Publications
Publications (83)
Objective: In the United Kingdom (UK) and most countries worldwide, midwives are professionally required to undertake an initial perinatal mental health (PMH) risk assessment at every maternity contact. However, studies have found that midwives feel that they are not well-equipped to provide effective care for women with PMH needs. This study explo...
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
• appreciate the importance of sexual health and well-being, as an integral dimension of public health
• explore holistic definitions of sexual health, to improve your professional practice
• examine the need for proactively promoting the public’s sexual health and well-being, chall...
A review of the textbook ‘Introduction to Psychosexual Medicine’ concluded that there was an identifiable need to “queer” the specific modality of counselling in psychosexual medicine. For decades, the term “queer” has been used, mostly pejoratively, against non-heterosexual people, especially “the homosexual” male, or, conversely, heterosexuals pe...
In the first chapter of this book, ‘The trouble with normal’: Covid- 19’s legacy and the multipotentiality for co- creating teaching, learning and assessing, Professor David Evans argues that the pandemic has challenged the more traditional ways of providing, teaching, learning and assessing, as well as reducing the possibilities for ‘real’ human- t...
Since 2000, English child sexual exploitation (CSE) policy has expanded, both in its understanding and response, to the
increasing recognition and scale of the problem. Since 2011, with the move from statutory guidance to a government action plan, there was, for the first time, a substantial increase in CSE responses across English local authoritie...
In 2014, the Institute of Psychosexual Medicine was considering practicalities of allowing nurses and physiotherapists to undertake its Diploma training programme, to sit the exams and gain the hither-to medical qualification. Evans (2014) added to the debate with a conference presentation and subsequent article, entitled ‘Future directions: collab...
This HEPI report, "Student relationships, sex and sexual health" had, as its primary objective, to provide a better evidence base on what is known and unknown concerning these aspects of young people's lives. We do not claim the evidence we have collected is perfect: some people may struggle to answer personal questions accurately, some may provide...
Adobe Spark learning resource, based on workshop presentations to undergraduate and post graduate students, for individual and group conference poster design and development.
Contains training videos. Available at: https://spark.adobe.com/page/r9NtXeOpsZB8n/
The "brief communication" opinion article, out of which this Abstract emanates, has been sent for peer review.
A review of the textbook 'Introduction to Psychosexual Medicine' concluded that there was an identifiable need to "queer" the field of psychosexual medicine. For decades, the term "queer" has been used, mostly pejoratively, against non-heterosexual people, especially "the homosexual" male, or, conversely, heterosexuals perceived as "deviating" from...
We report the frequency of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) diagnosed in UK adult film industry performers. A total of 100 adult film performers regularly screened for STIs on an average of every three weeks. High rates of condomless sex were reported and there were STIs recorded during the 19-year period covered by this study (1996–2015). ST...
The rationale for exploring adolescent pornography usage, with examination of possible negative emotional health outcomes, is integral to the role of the school nurse. The role of the school nurse is to lead on, coordinate and deliver the 4-5-6 approach of the Healthy Child Programme (Public Health England, 2018). This model specifically states tha...
Comment / Opinion article
"HIV was the biggest issue that touched me during my decade with the Catholic church. For one thing, it challenged my faith in organised religion. Why were so many millions of people living in fear of a virus? Why were so many societies and world religions hijacked by those who wanted to blame, to stigmatise and exclude?...
The task of psychosexual medicine, including expert genital examination, is “to help the person first complete the job of expressing, and then hearing, their own story1 ” (page 10). The emphasis through this textbook, produced by the Institute of Psychosexual Medicine (IPM), is demonstrated in compassionate case studies and thoughtful processes of...
As a National Teaching Fellow (2014) and a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA, 2018) Professor David Evans is both keen and excited to promote the various levels of Fellowships to his colleagues at the University of Greenwich. Here he describes his mentoring style of ‘cascade learning’.
https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/news-and-vi...
Report - with video presentations and links - from the 2019 International Days presentations, to nursing, midwifery and social work students and staff.
Introduction: Since the naming of AIDS and discovery of HIV the landscape of the pandemic is once again transforming, as we progress towards the end of this 4th decade. International nursing, medical and allied health educational research identify both on-going as well as new challenges facing clinical nurses and their educators.
Description: Whe...
Summary of session
School Nurse are no strangers to sexual health matters! Some are comfortable proactively promoting Relationships and Sex Education (RSE); others are expert helping young people prevent or deal with 'when things go wrong', but some can feel out of their depth, especially if asked to go in to a class and show 'scary' pictures of s...
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) was first labelled as a new illness in 1981; it took two more years to discover a causative virus, which was named human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 1985. Nurses who practised during those times may recall the fear, panic, stigma, ethical dilemmas and refusals to care that were associated with the pand...
In some ways, sex, sexualities and sexual health (abbreviated here as sex~) are the elephant in our class rooms. This presentation aims at acknowledging the presence of various matters sexual, across numerous disciplines and their curricula, and looking at ways of talking about sex~, dealing with, challenging, and sharing ideas on this ‘elephant in...
Referring in a plural case to “sexualities” indicates significantly more than a contemporary strategy at being inclusive across a spectrum of sexual diversity. Given the less than optimum ways many people have been, and still are, treated, based on minority sexual identity, or their attractions, practices or gender differences, then using the plura...
The Abstract and video presentation (and Prezi) of my keynote presentation are located at: https://drdavidtevanstel.wordpress.com/2016-belfast-sexual-health/
The abstract and references, along with the link for live video recording, of my presentation “LGB&T+ people's resilience in Northern Ireland”
https://drdavidtevanstel.wordpress.com/2016-belfast-sexual-health/
Key learning points:
– Sexual health and wellbeing are essential parts of each person’s holistic life
– Young people often lack the key knowledge, attitudes, skills and habits to effectively protect themselves and prevent episodes of sexual ill-health
– Primary care services are the front line, or first access, for promoting sexual wellbeing to...
“School nursing services can be an indispensable element helping maximise children and young people’s sexual health and well-being, ultimately contributing to the development of their knowledge, skills and resilience fit for life.
Intentionally promoting children and young people’s (C&YP) sexual health and well-being needs to deal with the positiv...
Sexual health and well-being is an intimate and integral part of what it means to be human and as such needs to be the business of every health care professional. This may sound like 'wishful thinking', but, essentially, if we do not include the sexual health dimensions of our client's lives in our health and educational service provision for them,...
Future directions: Collaborative learning and education for multi-professional practitioners? David Evans. The aim of the paper is to explore benefits for multi-professional psychosexual learning, in the context of wider debates regarding medical organisations sharing learning opportunities with post-qualified nurses. to promote the need for cross-...
The under-18 conception rate in England is at a 40-year low but a further reduction is needed to reach levels in comparable western European countries. Sexually transmitted infections are common among young people, with chlamydia the most prevalent STI in the UK. To challenge this, a multi-agency approach is needed, with high-quality sex and relati...
Anecdotal evidence from clinical practice, classroom learning and research studies suggests most aspects of sexual health and wellbeing are addressed inadequately or not at all. Some nurses may feel ill-equipped or underprepared to explore private or intimate aspects of a patient's sexual health or relationships, or may be too embarrassed to talk t...
Promoting sexual health and wellbeing: the role of the nurse. Anecdotal evidence from clinical practice, classroom learning and research studies suggests most aspects of sexual health and wellbeing are addressed inadequately or not at all. Some nurses may feel ill-equipped or underprepared to explore private or intimate aspects of a patient's sexua...
Sexual health matters! This motif underpins the entire thesis. With survey responses from university educators and focus group encounters with clinical professionals undertaking the UK-wide Sexual Health Skills course, the study explores ways in which specific discourses pertaining to sexual health and illness inform the need for, and provision of,...
men's health • The first article in this series (Practice Nurse 17 September 2010, pp30–4) considered the importance of an holistic approach when men present with sexual health issues. With the use of illustrative case histories, part two provides a practical approach to management of three common male problems: erectile dysfunction, worries about...
men's health. Male sexual health issues in general practice are hopefully not always a problem. Primary care staff have many opportunities to help men prevent the issues becoming problems in the first place. From a health promotion perspective, this has to be a priority. The UK's various national strategies for sexual health outline service provisi...
Men are often reluctant to access health care providers, so it is important to make every consultation count. A comprehensive history is the key to the identification of issues and problems. Sexually acquired conditions can occur to anybody at any time of life. Do not assume anything - if in doubt check it out! Discussing sexuality and sexual healt...
David T Evans argues that practice nurses have a duty to prepare themselves to provide proactive sexual health advice as part of their role in holistic health care
Despite sexual health remaining virtually non-existent in most pre-registration curricula, preventative healthcare is an obligation in the NMC's (2004) Code of Professional Conduct. Promoting effective condom use, as a proven contra-infection healthcare resource, over and above its contraceptive potential, is an essential element of good holistic c...
Teenagers need specific, direct and practical advice about why and how to use condoms, if they are to ever to accept them as a routine part of their sex lives. David T Evans is a freelance educational consultant in sexual health. Nurses need to actively pro-mote effective and consistent condom use, as an element of safer sex, among young people. Th...
This entry in Sexuality - the essential glossary - is one of 29 by David Evans, and explores numerous attitudes and perspectives on the human anus, especially in relation to sex / play.
The blossoming of sexual subcultures in the last hundred years has seen the development of a vast new sexual terminology. As academic research has grasped the challenge of understanding sexuality in the modern world it has generated its own analytical vocabulary to accompany it. For readers uncertain about some or all of this field, or who want pre...
The state of education and service provision relating to young people and sex, sexualities, and sexual health is currently a major national challenge. Nurses working in the compulsory education sector are at the direct interchange between clients and their obvious experiential and academic needs, and attitudes and systems that frequently seem to fa...
This paper examines both the paucity of references to 'homophobia in evidence-based practice (EBP)', as well as suggesting a way to redress the matter. David T Evans compares a traditional approach of EBP to this relatively new area of research focus, and suggests a reordering of the 'hierarchy of evidence'. Grappling with words and their meanings...
'Sexual health, the process: primary care' (chapter 11) explores sexual health from two main perspectives. The first is sexual health within the structures of primary health care, for example, primary healthcare steams. The second is from the primary, or first presenting, care needs of the client irrespective of which professional service they avai...
There are numerous social representations attached to HIV infection and disease, many of which have their origins in times and places far removed from this new illness. These representations, or psychic shadows, can negatively effect both the learning environment of Registered Nurses and Midwives, and have a detrimental impact on the care of those...
Questions
Questions (3)
Discourses utilising "sexual risk-taking behaviour" terminology, in relation to HIV, are, in themselves, at risk of positioning people and sex into categories of stigma and guilt.
True, false, maybe or sometimes?
When the majority of people - heterosexuals - the world over, have sex, they have sex. Some protect that sex from the possibility of pregnancy by using various methods of contraception, for the sake of "family planning" and / or the avoidance of unwanted conceptions.
Some additionally use condoms, either with or without other forms of contraceptive backup, as a "double Dutch" approach to contraception plus contra-infection, i.e. reducing their chances of acquiring or sharing sexual infections.
But since the earliest days of the HIV pandemic, when gay, bisexual and other males having sex with males (MSM) were identified - epidemiologically or scientifically categorised - as the primary "high risk" population, all sex between males is constructed within the discourses of (high) risky sex. For example, condomless or unprotected anal intercourse is, in some places, referred to as "bare backing". If heterosexuals had taken up the call to use condoms to the extent that gay males did in the early days of the pandemic, many younger generations of people would not be here today! Gay / bisexual / other MSM have been expected and required to "practice safe(r) sex" in ways that the majority of heterosexuals have not been called to do so. Indeed, an early Canadian safer sex advert declared "Safer sex works - gay men prove it!"
But to talk of sex in the context of "risk" as opposed to a pleasurable, normal, natural, human experience, automatically pathologises it for some people in a way that it is not for the majority. If someone then 'chooses' to have sex without a condom, are they being "risky", and should / ought / are they then 'blamed' if something goes wrong, for example, if they acquire an infection?
By shifting the discourse and language to "condomless sex" might this prove less stigmatising and less blaming than the notions of risk, risky and high risk sex?
What is "cultural competency" in relation to nursing care of LGBT+ people? Why do LGBT+ people need a special focus edition of the Journal of Research in Nursing? These and other questions to be asked of the authors of the guest editorial: Prof Julie Fish, DeMontfort University and Dr David Evans, University of Greenwich. Twitterchat: on 25 May 2016, 20.00hrs BST (GMT+1) at Twitter chat: #JRNtalk
Sexualities: How useful might it be for educators to promote a more dynamic, four dimensional and ever-evolving, approach, addressing orientation Identity; Labels; Attractions and Behaviours?
So often when I teach on sexualities, a number of students immediately fall into an historical, dyadic, trap with a hetero-homo divide. This traditional continuum or divide considers bisexuality as oscillating somewhere in the middle. When I inject other terms into the melting pot: bi-curious; heteroflexible; gay-for-pay; SMSM (straight males who have sex with males); situational homosexuality, etc. you can feel those grey-matter cells race along at break-speed pace.
Considering socially constructed "identity labels" as somewhat of a closed concept - ie the de facto label used to equate sexual orientation with a person’s identity: “I’m gay!” “I’m straight!” “You’re a fag!” - doesn't always seem fit for purpose. Look how both the identity and the label can be 'moveable feasts'; they might even have totally different meanings when they are overt (out in the open / shown to others) or covert, hidden: visible to a select few. The orientation may therefore include more than one identity, as might the label(s). Of course, many Queer Theorists would question the very relevance of trying to use definitions for identities or labels in the first place. In these metrosexual and post-everything days, does anyone still believe in biological immutability? In the practice of daily life, of course, many people obviously do.
When one considers that both a person’s identity and the label they use for it could be an overt 'front' for differing, covert – and maybe abject - feelings of attraction, or for sexual or relational practices with others, then isn't it about time these four dimensions got more of a public outing?
Prof Jane Ward (@thequeerjane), in her 2015 book Not Gay: sex between straight white men (#NotGayBook) unpicks the notion of behaviours or practices that some might consider to be ‘sex’, or sexual, whilst others clearly do not. For me, the range of diversity goes to demonstrate the wonderful complexity of being human. So, I ask: how might it be possible to get more educators (especially in schools, for compulsory education, and for the health professions) to move away from outmoded dyads in gender and sexuality studies? How might they explore not just orientation identities, but the impact of situational labels and the wider complexities of erotic capital, such as in inter-personal attractions and behaviours which do not always conform to the taken-for-granted (orientation) identity or its label?
