How Our Service Works

Ask the Experts is a service of the American Sexual Health Association (ASHA). It gives you access to medical experts who specialize in HPV, herpes, HIV, general STIs and sexual health. This valuable service is offered for a fee of $25 per question, with 2 follow up questions allowed after the original response from one of our experts. Our experts may also ask you some questions, to help better understand your concerns and get you the answers you need.

Once your question has been answered and closed, it will be displayed here as well for others to view. This is why it is important not to include any personally identifying information about you or anyone else in your question.

How to Ask a Question

  • You can begin by purchasing a question via our online store. During checkout, you can create a user account for our site if you don’t already have one.
  • Next, log in and post your question to our experts. We will then respond to you no later than 48 hours, but usually within 12 hours. You will receive an email letting you know your question has been answered and can log in to see the response.
  • If needed, you can ask two follow up questions to the expert who responded.
  • We cannot honor requests for questions to be assigned to a specific expert.
  • Each expert may close a discussion at any point if the questions become repetitive or abusive. This is done at their discretion and their decisions are final. No refunds will be made in these situations.

 

A few rules to remember:

  • Initial questions must be no longer than 1,500 characters, including spaces (about 300 words) and must be posted in the initial space provided. Longer questions that exceed the automatic limit or that are continued in a second comment window will be deleted without reply.
  • Please type your question directly in the space provided and do not copy and paste from another program – this will help avoid formatting issues that make questions difficult to read.
  • Each user is limited to two questions in any 6 month period. This policy assures that the forum will not be dominated by relatively few users, and is also intended to limit anxiety related questions with little educational value. Third and subsequent questions, and repetitive questions that in the opinion of the moderators are driven by anxiety or have obvious answers, will be deleted without reply and without refund of the posting fee.
  • Questions must be posted in English. Other languages may be considered at a later date.
  • No posting of questions by persons under 16 years of age without the consent of their parents.
  • Do NOT ask a question that is or includes information that is obscene, derogatory, defamatory, threatening, harassing, abusive, slanderous, hateful, or embarrassing to any other person or entity as determined by ASHA in its sole discretion.
  • Do not impersonate another person or entity.
  • Do not register under more than one name and/or e-mail address.
  • Do not distribute viruses or other harmful computer code.
  • Do not allow any other person or entity to use your identification for posting or viewing comments.
  • Do not post your full name(s), or any other confidential or personally identifiable information on the ASHA website.
  • The content you post on our web site is a property of ASHA. If you disregard this warning and post personal or confidential information to include your user name (yours or others) on the ASHA website, which you later want removed, ASHA may decide to remove it in an exceptional event but there is a fee of $25 to remove each posting. You must submit your removal request in writing, including the URL(s) you want removed. Also you must include your User ID along with a U.S. check or money order for $25 for each URL you wish to have removed to: ASHA, PO Box 13827, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709.