A Brief History

Beginning as the Salisbury Gay Men's Health Project in the mid 1990s, the service was originally funded to provide information and advice about HIV/AIDS and other areas of sexual health and to support the gay and bisexual community in Salisbury. As part of this the Project co-produced Coming Out and Staying Out and in 1996 this website began as an online version of that guide.

In that same year, Salisbury GMHP was taken over by Wessex Community Action, the website was greatly expanded with much more information for gay and bisexual men, and shortly after Salisbury GMHP merged with similar projects based in Swindon and Bath becoming Gay Men's Health Wiltshire and Swindon.

Over the years, Gay Men's Health did a huge amount of work with the gay community across Wiltshire and Swindon, providing information resources, one-to-one counselling, and working with local groups and service providers such as the police, the health service and schools and colleges. Two youth groups (The OUT Zone and 2BME) were set-up, which like Coming Out and Staying Out helped prevent many local LGBT people from feeling isolated at a time when it wasn't so easy to be gay.

In 2007, Gay Men's Health was renamed to Men's Sexual Health and began providing more general health information as well as continuing work with the local gay and bisexual community. There were many campaigns over the next seven years, with a variety of posters popping up throughout Wiltshire and Swindon and online persuading local men to take care of their sexual and general health.

Sadly in 2014, as local NHS services (and other funders such as local councils) ceased to provide funding, the Men's Sexual Health service closed down.

The first websites that became the Men's Sexual Health site were put together by Douglas T Newberry (one of the first Project workers for Salisbury GMHP) and Lee Corbin (who has maintained the website since the beginning and developed the Men's Sexual Health brand). At the end of October 2015, the website was very generously given over to Lee and Douglas by Wessex Community Action.

We at the now independent Men's Sexual Health website give our appreciation to all those who worked for the service over the years, each of whom helped many local gay and bisexual people and helped put together the information on this site. In particular we thank Matt, Mara and Debrah who were there at the end.