Sexual Health is Health: Jessica Yih, MD, Broadens Access to Care

Sept. 4, 2026, is World Sexual Health Day, and this year’s theme, “Every Body,” centers around one question: “Whose bodies are sexual health systems built for — and whose are left out?”

“That question is exactly what led to my career, where I specialize in the treatment of female sexual dysfunction,” says Jessica Yih, MD, an assistant professor of urology at the UC Irvine School of Medicine and director of the Women’s Sexual Health and Male Infertility program.

“Sexual health systems were largely built for the male body,” says Yih, noting that there are multiple FDA-approved medications for erectile dysfunction and other male sexual dysfunctions, with decades of research behind them. That’s not the case for women.

“Women with low desire, sexual pain or menopausal symptoms have been dismissed with a shrug or told to ‘have a glass of wine,’” says Yih. “That’s not a biological gap. It’s a gap in whose suffering we decided was worth studying and treating. The same is true for anyone whose sexual health concern doesn’t fit the systems we built.”

Sexual Medicine: Gaps in Care

Yih first recognized disparities in sexual health in 2008, during her first year of medical school.

“My best friend in my class confided that she had severe dyspareunia — pain during intercourse — and we looked in all our medical textbooks and could not find any useful information about assessment and treatment,” says Yih. “Essentially, she had given up the idea of having sex for pleasure and intimacy, resigning to only trying it if ready to have kids.”

It wasn’t until Yih started her residency in urology that she learned about the field of female sexual medicine and, while attending an American Urological Association (AUA) meeting, finally found a diagnosis for her friend.

“I remember the moment it clicked,” she says. “I met Dr. Irwin Goldstein — the ‘grandfather of the field of female sexual medicine’ — at an AUA meeting, where he was teaching about nerves to the clitoris, G spot and the female prostate, and suddenly there was a name for what my friend had experienced: vulvodynia.” [A condition that causes chronic pain in the vulvar region.]

Yih then found her calling to better understand sexual health and expand access to care.

“Sexual health sits at the intersection of medicine, relationships, identity and quality of life, and it was being treated as an afterthought,” she says. “We had treatments for men but not for women.”

She went on to complete her fellowship at San Diego Sexual Medicine and has been working to close the gap ever since, including around disparities based on race, gender and sexual orientation.

Building a Sexual Health Program

Yih explains that her goals for the Women’s Sexual Health and Male Infertility program are threefold:

1. Create a clinical space to address previously dismissed needs, supporting patients with conditions such as vulvodynia, hypoactive sexual desire disorder and genitourinary syndrome of menopause.
2. Conduct clinical and translational research that generates the evidence base the sexual medicine field has been missing.
3. Offer comprehensive care to couples under one roof when it comes to male infertility, recognizing that fertility and sexual health are deeply intertwined, though rarely treated that way.

“UC Irvine has given me the opportunity,” says Yih, “to build something that barely exists anywhere — a program where women’s sexual health is treated with the same rigor, resources and legitimacy as any other area of medicine.”

Yih’s research includes developing a multi-institutional vulvodynia registry, which she is building with collaborators nationwide.

“The registry exists because I kept seeing patients who had spent years bouncing between providers,” she says, “and I realized we couldn’t improve care without systematically studying it.”

She is also working on testosterone therapy in women, where she says the evidence gap compared to men is “staggering,” and she’s conducting studies using large national datasets to look at questions like sexual dysfunction for postpartum women.

“The disparity itself is a research subject for me,” she says. “We’ve published on how female sexual dysfunction receives a fraction of the research attention and funding that male sexual dysfunction does, despite comparable prevalence.”

Furthermore, her approach is multidisciplinary. “Clinically and scientifically, I work alongside pelvic floor physical therapists, sex therapists, gynecologists, endocrinologists and pain specialists,” she says, “because these conditions are almost always multifactorial.”

Increasing Awareness

Yih is also working to ensure future doctors have the knowledge needed to address patients’ sexual health concerns effectively.

“I hope to inspire students to think about sexual health from all perspectives, regardless of which specialty they end up in, and I also hope some of them will follow in my footsteps to specialize in female sexual health treatment,” she says.

“Within the School of Medicine, I mentor students through research projects from question to publication,” she says, “and I try to make sure every trainee who rotates with me leaves knowing how to actually take a sexual health history, which most physicians were never taught!”

But you don’t have to be in medical school to learn from Yih. Her public Instagram account is her attempt to meet people where they are.

“Patients come to me with years of misinformation, or worse, years of silence,” she says. “If a 60-second post gives someone the language to share their concern with their doctor, or lets them know that their symptom has a name and a treatment, that’s medicine too.”

Noting that the stigma around these topics thrives on silence, Yih says she’s vocal on social media to set the record straight while having a bit of fun.

This work also helps inform her research. “When I can’t explain a treatment decision to a medical student or in an Instagram caption,” she says, “I know that’s an area requiring more research to fully understand the basic science mechanisms.”

Every Body Deserves Care

Yih is part of a larger movement to spotlight female sexual health.

“There’s definitely been a growth of interest in the last few years, and I believe a huge part is the tireless work in advocacy by doctors and patients, especially utilizing social media,” she says.

Yih points to trailblazers such as Cindy Eckert, the brains behind the Addyi medication for low libido in women, as well as to menopause advocates Tamsen Fadal and Mary Claire Haver, MD; sexual medicine specialist Rachel Rubin, MD; and sex med expert and urologist Kelly Casperson, MD.

“We have women advocating for women, and I’m grateful to be playing my part in highlighting these important topics.”

So what is Yih’s message for World Sexual Health Day?

“Sexual health is health,” she says. “It’s not a luxury, not vanity, not just psychological and not something to be embarrassed about.”

She further encourages people to continue seeking solutions. “If you’ve brought up a concern and been dismissed, the problem was not your body. Keep asking,” she stresses. “There are more of us out here working to make sure every body gets an answer.”

— Shani Murray