Classroom voices: youth perspectives to direct school-based sexual health education

ABSTRACT

Sexual health education is a well-known, evidence-based intervention that can improve adolescent health outcomes, increase protective health behaviours, and decrease risky health behaviours. Providing sexual health education in schools offers opportunities to discuss critical health topics and can improve the school environment. However, not all sexual health education is taught equitably. As part of a mixed-methods study to describe school-based sexual health education, we conducted focus groups and interviews with recent high school graduates in a geographically and ethnically diverse state in the US Southwest. Thirty-one young people shared their experiences, explored the content they had been taught, and offered recommendations to improve sexual health education. Three key themes emerged: young people wanted and needed sexual health education taught in school; current sexual health education is not helpful and sometimes harmful; and the individuals who teach sexual health education are critically important. These findings can help address barriers to school-based sexual health education delivery, particularly for schools within communities with limited resources. The results support including youth as stakeholders in the planning and evaluation of school-based sexual health education, and the development of sexual health education teacher training with the goal of improving youth health outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• sexual health education
• adolescent health
• youth
• qualitative research
• USA

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the young people of New Mexico who participated in this study and generously gave of their time and expertise. We acknowledge and appreciate the youth-facing organisations and community partners affiliated with the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Lumivero. 2023. NVIVO. Accessed 2 May 2023. https://lumivero.com/products/nvivo/

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by an award from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, US National Institutes of Health under grant number UL1TR001449. The views expressed are the authors’ own.