Editorial Where the Most Private Becomes Public: Policy Making for Sexual Health The PLoS Medicine Editors*

zation estimated that in 1999 there were 340 million new cases of curable sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)—syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and trichomonia-sis—in men and women aged 15–49 years [1]. Although in Western countries cur-able STDs may not seem a major threat to public health, these diseases disproportion-ately affect the poor, young people, and ethnic minorities, and can cause acute illness, disability and death, pre-term or low birth-weight babies, congenital birth defects, female infertility, and increased HIV transmission. High-income countries are by no means exempt from the burden of STDs: there are 19 million new cases of STDs each year in the United States, at an estimated cost of US$15.9 billion annually to the US health care system [2]. Yet the burden of morbidity and mortality from STDs is only one aspect of sexual health. Formerly considered under the umbrella of reproductive health by policy makers, sexual health was identified as a topic meriting attention in its own right by the World Healt