WEBINAR this Wednesday: Queering Health Systems

Join our webinar this Wednesday 20 May to connect directly with the editorial team and Guest Editors of the upcoming themed issue on Queering Health Systems and get everything you need to submit with confidence.

In this interactive session, you will:

Meet the editorial team and the Guest Editors for the themed issue
Get insider insights into what makes a strong submission
Explore the context and urgency of this topic
Have your questions answered live

Whether you are an experienced researcher, practitioner, or emerging voice, this is your chance to contribute to a timely and important conversation.

Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters (SRHM) is launching a themed issue – in partnership with the School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape, South Africa – on Queering Health Systems.

People with marginalised sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) across diverse global contexts contend with health systems that fail to recognise, affirm and respond to their lived realities.

Experiences of stigma, exclusion, criminalisation and denial of care are embedded across health policies, institutions, service delivery models and data systems.

More recently, these inequities have been intensified by rising anti-gender movements, shrinking civic space and punitive legal environments, with deleterious implications for access to SRHR, including HIV prevention, treatment and care, harm reduction, gender-affirming care and mental health support.

This themed issue positions queering health systems as both a critical analytical lens and a transformative political practice that interrogates power, labels and knowledge hierarchies.

Queering challenges the assumption that health systems are neutral by interrogating how cisnormative, heteronormative and binary frameworks shape their design, governance and delivery. It draws attention to the persistent silence on SOGIESC issues within mainstream public health and health systems discourse.

In addressing these silences and biases, it prioritises the lived experiences, knowledge and leadership of LGBTQI+ communities.

Importantly, queering health policies and systems is not a niche intervention; it highlights the importance of intersectionality, recognising how sexuality, gender identity, expression and discrimination intersect with race, class, disability, geography and other axes of marginalisation in shaping health outcomes across one’s life-course.

This themed issue seeks to advance both conceptual and empirical scholarship that critically engages with the project of queering health policies and systems across diverse contexts.

It invites contributions that document barriers and innovations, examine policy and practice, and amplify community-led approaches to transforming health systems.

By bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives and lived experiences, the issue aims to contribute to a more inclusive, accountable and rights-based SRHR agenda that leaves no-one behind.

We welcome emailed proposals for submissions to this themed issue. Following assessment of the initial proposals, selected authors will be directly invited to submit their full manuscripts to the issue.

Mentoring will be available for less-experienced authors, where required.

DEADLINE FRIDAY 3 JULY 2026

Read the full call for proposals

This themed issue will be guest edited by Humphrey Ndondo and Phoene Oware, in close collaboration with SRHM’s editorial team.

Humphrey Ndondo is a public health leader and HIV prevention expert with over 18 years of experience advancing equitable, community-centred health responses across Zimbabwe and the African region. He holds a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Zimbabwe.
Currently, he coordinates the Inclusive Men’s Advocacy for Rights Alliance in Africa (IMARAA).

Phoene Oware is a social scientist and public health researcher whose work focuses on gender, sexual and reproductive health, trauma-informed research and practice, social policy and social protection. She holds an undergraduate degree in International Relations, and a Masters and PhD in Development Studies.
Phoene is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Public Health, University of the Western Cape.