Disclosure in Sexual and Reproductive Health

Disclosure of any concealed trait can be difficult. Disclosure related to sexual and reproductive health introduces an added layer of complexity given the often-associated sexual and gender power dynamics that accompany disclosure. Women may feel particularly vulnerable to disclosing concealed identities to partners, family, and the general community given their relatively disenfranchised status compared to men in many settings. The act of disclosure often entails overcoming stigma and often results in increased transparency and access to care for the concealed identity. HIV disclosure is often crucial to preventing transmission, engaging partners in screening and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), and often allows people living with HIV to obtain increased social support resulting in improved antiretroviral adherence and viral loads. Similarly, disclosure of curable sexually transmitted infections (STI) to partners is an important first step to STI cure. Additionally, as access to PrEP and contraception spreads, these issues will also be subject to concealment and disclosure.

This Research Topic aims to explore the dynamics of disclosure related to HIV, pre-exposure (PrEP), contraception, non-HIV sexually transmitted infections, and more as these issues relate to women and their experienced sexual and gender power dynamics. While the factors surrounding disclosure can often be similar among these topics, scant research has explored the common threads among disclosure related to these issues. We hope that by collecting manuscripts related to the disclosure of sexual and reproductive health-related topics, we can aggregate this research into one cohesive section with the goal of researchers from different fields learning and building upon the work of each other.

Under the Research Topic theme, entitled “Disclosure related to sexual and reproductive health”, we are looking for papers that are inclusive of diverse theoretical approaches and multidisciplinary methodologies through a lens of gender and power dynamics.

Some key questions and issues will include but are not limited to the following:

• Theoretical models and frameworks to consider disclosure
• The role of gender and sexuality in disclosure
• Novel areas of disclosure that are shaped by sexual and reproductive health
• Evaluation of disclosure confidant type (e.g. type of partner, parent, child)
• The role of psychosocial factors including culture, gender-based violence, mental health, social support, resilience, and self-efficacy.
• The role of and forms of stigma and its role in disclosure

We welcome contributions that present original empirical work both quantitative and qualitative; conceptual or theoretical analyses; meta-analyses; systematic reviews; or unique visions and perspectives. We encourage multidisciplinary scholarly contributions that come from diverse disciplines such as epidemiology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, public health, behavioral medicine, population health, implementation science, community based participatory research, and human centered design approaches.