A statistician and demographer by training, my career began leading the analyses for the second National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal). In 2005, I was awarded a Fellowship from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) (‘Exploring the contribution of general practice to the management of sexual health in the UK’); and then in 2008 began as Principal Investigator for the MRC-funded project ‘Public health outcomes, costs and cost-effectiveness of GUM and primary care based STI services’). In 2008, we also secured grants from the MRC and Wellcome Trust to undertake Natsal-3, the initial outputs being published as a series in the Lancet in 2013 (www.lancet.com/themed/natsal). In 2014, we won funding from the NIHR for the Health Protection Research Unit in Blood Borne and Sexually Transmitted Infections, for which I lead the Research Theme on ‘Understanding Risk and Risk Reduction’, covering epidemiological, social science, public health and clinical aspects of preventing STI transmission among those who experience the greatest STI burden. I co-lead Natsal, which is now funded as part of Wellcome Trust’s Longitudinal Population Studies Strategy, reflecting how, as repeat cross-sectional surveys, Natsal is able to capture age, period, and birth cohort effects and has captured - and will continue to capture - striking changes in the sexual behaviour, attitudes and heathcare behaviour of people born over much of the 20^th Century.