SexRurality Conference 2025 | Reimagining Sexual Health in Rural Victoria

The Centre for Excellence in Rural Sexual Health welcomed 130 delegates to the Department of Rural Health's Shepparton Campus in June 2025 for the biannual SexRurality Conference.

The SexRurality Conference is Australia's only rural and regional sexual health conference, providing a platform for knowledge sharing on a range of sexual and reproductive health topics. This year's conference focussed on the unique strengths and challenges of rural and regional Victorian communities.

The conference plenary speakers explored topics including abortion advocacy and access, preventing violence against transgender women, sexually transmissible infections epidemiology, masculinity and respect, and cultural knowledge sharing across Indigenous communities. A panel discussion featuring medical students of the Sexual Health Across Clinical Contexts Discovery subject concluded the second day of plenary sessions.

Four concurrent streams were facilitated during the conference, with 40 abstracts presented. The stream themes included:

Creating solutions within systems and clinical contexts

The Creating Solutions stream highlighted solutions to challenges within systems, clinical contexts, training pathways and models of care. Presentations in this stream included:

• Sexual health clinical mentorship models
• Older Australians’ sexual healthcare
• Cervical screening initiatives
• Qualitative evidence of rural women’s experiences of care
• Screening tool for reproductive coercion
• Integrating sexual health promotion into Aboriginal organisations
• Abortion deserts

Building Resilience 

The Building Resilience stream focused on planning for and responding to new and mounting challenges.  Presentations in this stream included:

• Enablers and barriers to abortion care from clinical and social perspectives, including qualitative data on women’s experiences accessing abortion
• Prevention of child sexual abuse
• Innovative education initiatives
• Strategies to support LGBTQIA+ communities in the face of anti-LGBTQIA+ activism

Empowering Through Education

The Empowering Through Education stream showcased innovative, inclusive approaches to sexual health education tailored to rural communities. Presentations in this stream included:

• Educating young people from alternative education and non-English speaking settings
• Using a whole of school approach to Relationships and Sexuality Education
• Values based messaging in Sexual and Reproductive Health
• Cervical screening and self-collection
• Pop-up STI testing initiatives
• Menopause

The Education stream also included two workshops, understanding and teaching affirmative consent, and using the Cliterate model in practice.

Sexual and Reproductive health research involving rural communities

This stream focused on sexual and reproductive health research in a rural Australian context. Presentations in this stream included:

• Methoxyflurane effectiveness and tolerability for outpatient IUD insertion
• Abortion care
• Online STI testing models
• Partner delivered bacterial vaginosis treatment
• Supporting LGBTQIA+ Australians who have experience miscarriage
• Comparison of sexual activity and contraception choices of young people in metro and rural setting

The conference provided networking opportunities, a variety of informative and educational presentations and service engagement.