Ira Sharlip, MD

Ira D. Sharlip, M.D., is a Professor of Urology at the University of California at San Francisco. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned B.A. and M.D. degrees. He did his residency in urology at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) and post-residency training at the Middlesex Hospital in London, England. He supervises urology residents at UCSF and practices urology and urological surgery at Golden Gate Urology in San Francisco.

Dr. Sharlip is an internationally recognized authority on urological problems of the male sexual and reproductive systems. He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and/or book chapters.

He is Founder and Past-President of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America (SMSNA) and Past President of the International Society for Sexual Medicine. He has served the World Health Organization (WHO) as a member of one of its Technical Advisory Groups. In 2009-2014, he was a key leader in the joint WHO/American Urological Association (AUA) Circumcision Task Force in a landmark and successful effort to promote circumcision for prevention of HIV transmission in sub-Saharan Africa.

He has served the AUA as a member or chairman of several committees including, among others, the Practice Guidelines Committee, the Public Media Committee and the AUA’s initial Vasectomy Guideline Committee, which produced the first-ever evidence-based guideline for optimum preoperative, intraoperative and postoperative practices in vasectomy.

In the past 10 years, Dr. Sharlip has been Chair of the SMSNA Legislative Affairs Committee. He and other SMSNA and AUA legislative leaders demonstrated to U. S. Congressional representatives the need for creation of a federal Office of Men’s Health within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As a result, in February 2026 a bill called the State of Men’s Health Act (H.R.7602) has been introduced in the House of Representatives.

Dr. Sharlip served as Senior Flight Surgeon in the United States Army’s 145th Combat Aviation Battalion during the Vietnam conflict and is a decorated veteran of more than 100 combat missions. He has consulted at hospitals in many countries and volunteered as a physician and surgeon in Kenya, Thailand, and Vietnam. In 2004, he served as the urologist on a 30-physician U.S. team that traveled to Baghdad to assess healthcare needs in Iraq.