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HST provides free electronic access to over 500 health systems research related reports, publications and papers. Close to 300 of these are publications that have been commissioned and funded by the Trust. Topics include among others district systems development, drug supply management, human resource development, informatics, legislation, finance, environmental health, mental health, lessons learnt, nutrition and sexually transmitted diseases / HIV/AIDS. The main publication of the HST is the annual South African Health Review. From 2005 all HST publications will be available in low resolution only. To explore the range of publications HST offers use the Advanced search to search using a variety of criteria.

Carter Heyward goes so far as to claim that:
Most historians, sexologists, and others who are interested in how sexual practices and attitudes have developed historically seem to agree that in the realm of sexual attitudes, Western history and christian [sic] history are so closely linked as to be in effect indistinguishable. That is to say, the christian church has been the chief architect of an attitude toward sexuality during the last seventeen-hundred years of European and Euroamerican history an obsessive, proscriptive attitude [Heyward 1994: 12-13].

What Carter Heyward states here for the First World, has impacted through Western missionaries and churches on Africa and South Africa as well. In its first part this presentation will trace the development of sexual norms within Christianity, showing up some of the historic and societal factors that shaped them. The reality of AIDS within churches is proof that the norms for sexual behaviour are not necessarily adhered to by their members. Hence the second part looks at challenges that the reality of AIDS has raised and how churches are responding to them. Finally some attempts to develop a new theology of sexuality are discussed.