1010 - Centering Pleasure in Sexual Health
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2026
⏱️ 15 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
Sexual education often focuses on the potential risks of unplanned pregnancies and STIs. But an approach to sexual health that includes frank discussions of what feels good could yield better health outcomes. In this episode: Sexual health expert Joshua O'Neal talks about the value of starting sexual health conversations with enjoyment and comfort. Note: This episode was produced in collaboration with the National Coalition of STD Directors.
Guests:
Joshua O'Neal, MA, is a sexual health educator and program director at the Southeast HIV/STI Prevention Training Center.
Host:
Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Show links and related content:
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Pleasure and PrEP: Pleasure-Seeking Plays a Role in Prevention Choices and Could Lead to PrEP Initiation—American Journal of Men's Health
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Pleasure as a measure of agency and empowerment—Medicus Mundi Schweiz
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Pleasure As Tool For STI Prevention: Part 2—NCSD Real Talk
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.h.u. |
| 0:22.7 | That's public health question at jh.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | Hey listeners, happy Valentine's Day. |
| 0:34.0 | It's Lindsay Smith-Rogers, and today I speak with Joshua O'Neill, the director of the Southeast |
| 0:38.5 | STI and Prevention Training Center in Atlanta, about his work with sexual health programs and |
| 0:43.3 | clinics and how to center pleasure in STI prevention and public health. Let's listen. Joshua O'Neill, |
| 0:50.5 | welcome to the podcast. How are you? I'm great. Thanks. Thank you for having me. |
| 0:54.6 | Sure. Today we are talking about something a little bit different. We're talking about pleasure as |
| 0:59.7 | STI prevention. But before we get into that, would you give us a little bit of background about you and your work? |
| 1:05.8 | Sure, of course. So my name's Joshua. I use he-him pronouns. I oversee sexual health programs. It includes clinics and includes programming throughout the southeast. I also am currently the director of the Southeast HIV and SDI prevention training center. So I provide technical assistance and training to clinicians and public health staff throughout the Southeast region. |
| 1:27.5 | How did you get into this work? |
| 1:29.1 | You know, that's a good question. |
| 1:30.6 | I think as a young person, growing up in the Midwest, a queer person, in a Christian household, |
| 1:36.8 | I didn't have a lot of access to information in terms of sexuality or in terms of |
| 1:41.3 | sex ed. |
| 1:41.9 | And so when I got access to that, I think that it changed my life. It changed |
| 1:46.7 | the trajectory of my career, absolutely. And it was liberating. And so here I am. Decades later, |
| 1:52.9 | still doing the work that I love and showing up hard in spaces like this to keep the message going. |
| 1:59.6 | So let's start out. Maybe give us an idea of the types of topics you |
| 2:03.4 | would normally cover. Well, that's a great question. So I am here to talk about pleasure, right? |
... |
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