Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Sex workers, who provide sexual or erotic acts in exchange for payment, often experience multiple disadvantages, including mental ill health and substance misuse. Mainstream healthcare services are generally not configured to facilitate engagement with sex workers and therefore, services are needed that are accessible to this population. De-duplication, study selection and data extraction will be conducted using Covidence software.
Included studies will describe or evaluate approaches, services or interventions that address the health needs of sex workers who offer services that involve physical contact with a client. No ethical review is needed. The final report will be shared with Birmingham City Council as part of ongoing work and will be disseminated by peer-reviewed publication. The inclusion of grey literature means that publication bias is reduced and will enable a wider examination of the interventions that have been described or evaluated outside of the academic literature.
One of the review team members developed the methods, now widely used, that will be adopted during data analysis. Use of the Effect, Mechanism, Moderator, Implementation, Economic framework allows for a thorough examination of interventions.
The primary goal of this scoping review is to map the existing literature and identify knowledge gaps; while this breadth of coverage is useful for identifying studies overall, it may prioritise quantity over quality, meaning that equal weight is given to studies of varying quality and significance. We recognise that the sex worker population is exceptionally diverse in terms of socioeconomic status, and location and methods of working.
The number of sex workers in the UK is estimated to be around 72 2 ; the majority are female. In England and Wales, the sale and purchase of sexual services between consenting adults are legal.
