Repro Health Hub

Over the past month, there has been a lot of talk about sex education in this country (or a lack thereof) and we learned the sad truth of why education is necessary. The most recent study from the University of Washington in Seattle that was released a week ago was the most telling of the current state of sex ed. The team of researchers based their finding in data pulled from a national survey of teenagers conducted back in 2002, and the results reaffirm everything we’ve suspected for years now.

The findings go as follows: That year, one in four teens received abstinence-only education, nine percent received no sex ed at all, and the other two thirds had access to comprehensive education that included information about birth control. The teens that had access to comprehensive sex ed were 60% less likely to become pregnant or impregnating someone else than someone receiving no education and 30% less likely than those with abstinence-only education. The leader of the study, Pamela Kohler, said in a statement, “There was no evidence to suggest that abstinence-only education decreased the likelihood of ever having sex or getting pregnant.”

This comes to absolutely no surprise to us- it only further emphasizes the need for accurate information to be accessible to teens. Fortunately, there are multiple efforts to tackle this issue from new fronts online, like Scarleteen, a fabulous website dedicated to young adult sex education.

The organization believes that sex education should have a role beyond the classroom and that sex ed is about more than just birth control and safe sex. With a holistic approach to informing youth about sex, sexuality, and relationships, Scarleteen offer its nearly 30,000 users a valuable resource to answer anonymous questions and provide a fun forum for wide ranging sex topics.

And for that, they are our Repro Hero of the Week. Bravo, Scarleteen!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Sex education, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.