If you are sexually active, get a sexual health check at your doctor, or local sexual health clinic. A sexual health check may involve:

• Questions about: your sexual orientation (eg straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender), number of sexual partners, sexual practices, symptoms etc; and
• An examination that may include taking swabs, taking urine samples and a blood test.

Queensland Health has collated links to websites with sexual health information resources and other service providers.

The International Student Health Hub has been co-designed with international students to provide easily accessible information on sexual health and reproductive services.

Safe sex: it's probably not the first time you've heard the phrase, but what does it mean to you? Maybe you or your partner is on the contraceptive pill, you use condoms sometimes (or all the time) or maybe you just feel that 'it won't happen to me'.

Safe sex means caring for both your own health and the health of your partner. Being safe protects you from getting or passing on sexually transmissible infections (STIs) as well as an unplanned pregnancy. If you are sexually active, stay safe by using condoms and talking to your sexual partner about safe sex.

Contraception is a way to prevent pregnancy, and is sometimes called 'birth control'. Common forms of contraception include the contraceptive pill, implants, injections and condoms.

Whilst the contraceptive pill is an effective method of birth control it does not prevent the transmission of STIs. Barrier contraceptives such as condoms are an effective method for preventing both pregnancies and most STIs. While some STIs are curable many are not and require a lifetime of maintenance and/or treatment, such as genital herpes and HIV/AIDs.

If you have unprotected sex, you may be at risk of a sexually transmissible infection (STI), such as chlamydia, gonorrhoea and HIV/AIDS. Many STIs have no symptoms so people are unaware they are passing on an infection.

Queensland Health provides the free 13HEALTH webtest service tests for chlamydia and gonorrhoea. You can choose to either give a urine sample at your local pathology collection centre or order a home mailing kit and post your urine sample back.

• Queensland Health – Sexual Health
• Queensland Aids Council – Healthy Communities
• True relationships and reproductive health 

Information on this web page is periodically updated. It was originally compiled by Rebecca Tretheway, in a partnership between Student Wellbeing and PUB352 Public Health Project for the USC Health and Wellbeing Project.