| Dear WAS Members and Friends,
As we settle in 2026, WAS remains committed to advancing Sexual Health, Rights, Justice, and Pleasure for ALL, through evidence, partnership, and principled advocacy. | | | A Message from the President of the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) | | | | 2026 will be a year of decisive leadership for sexual health.
Across the world, too many people—especially women—continue to experience their sexuality in silence, stigma, or neglect by health systems. This is no longer acceptable.
In the year ahead, WAS will place a clear and uncompromising focus on the Sexual Health of women across the life course. This includes the millions of women in menopause whose desire, comfort, and intimacy are still dismissed. It includes cancer survivors who are expected to be grateful for survival while their sexual lives are ignored. And it includes those whose access to fertility care, assisted reproduction, and IVF is shaped more by geography, wealth, and politics than by rights or medical need.
Sexual Health is not a luxury. It is a core dimension of health, dignity, and human development.
In 2026, WAS will intensify its leadership at the intersection of science, rights, and social justice— supporting research that matters, clinical practice that respects lived experience, and policies that expand rather than restrict bodily autonomy and sexual wellbeing.
We will continue to connect evidence to advocacy, and care to human rights, so that Sexual Health is no longer peripheral—but recognized globally as essential to health, equity, and quality of life. | | | Upcoming WAS–UNFPA Webinar | | | | Insights and Trends in Out-of-School Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Eastern European Region | | | Date: 3 February 2026
Time: 4-5 pm SAST | Find your local time here
Millions of young people worldwide never receive in-school sexuality education due to displacement, disability, discrimination, poverty, early marriage, conflict, or other systemic barriers. Out-of-school CSE is not only a programmatic gap, it is a matter of sexual justice.
This second installment in our global webinar series focuses on developments, challenges, and innovations across the Eastern European region, including:
● How out-of-school CSE initiatives are evolving
● Key insights from recent global research
● Practical, community-led innovations from the field
● Why reaching excluded young people is essential to advancing sexual rights and justice
Join Andrey Poshtaruk, Regional Advisor on HIV and Youth for UNFPA in Europe and Central Asia. He is joined by returning panelists Esther Corona-Vargas (WAS Vice President and Co-Chair, Sexual Justice Initiative) and Elizabeth Schroeder (WAS Consultant on Out-of-School CSE), alongside regional speakers, for a grounded and forward-looking discussion.
| | | IJSH Spotlight: New Research from the Official Journal of WAS | | | | Editor's Selected Article | | | Non-Genitally Stimulated Orgasms Increase Plasma Prolactin in a Menopausal Woman
Pfaus, J. G., Erez, R., Erez, N., & Novák, J. (2026).
https://doi.org/10.1080/19317611.2025.2608697 | | | WAS is also proud to share new work from the International Journal of Sexual Health (IJSH), the official journal of the World Association for Sexual Health.
This open-access paper explores non-genitally stimulated orgasms in a menopausal woman, finding measurable physiological markers associated with orgasm and highlighting new directions for research and therapeutic approaches to orgasm difficulty, including for women beyond reproductive age.
| | | Thank you for being part of a global community working to ensure that Sexual Health, and the conditions that make it possible, are accessible to everyone, everywhere.
Warm regards,
World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) | | Support the Mission of WAS We invite you to support the ongoing work of the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS).
Your contributions help us continue our mission of promoting Sexual Health, Rights, and Justice globally. Consider becoming a supporting member or making a financial contribution today.
Donations are tax-deductible in the USA. | | | |  | |
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