Implementing sexual health education policies and programs in challenging environments

The political climate in Louisiana makes implementing comprehensive sexual health education challenging. While state law permits schools to teach about condoms and contraception, most schools do not understand the policies and use abstinence-only curricula. Given the high rates of adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in Louisiana, School Health Connection (SHC),a program of the Louisiana Public Health Institute, is working directly with schools to clarify the state law and assist schools in developing building-level comprehensive sexual health education policies and in implementing sexual health education programming. Through a needs assessment of high school health educators, it was determined that schools are at different levels of readiness for implementing comprehensive sexual health education. SHC worked with an urban public high school that had identified sexual health education as a priority to develop and implement a comprehensive sexual health education policy. The evidence-based intervention “Becoming a Responsible Teen” (BART) was chosen for implementation and, in accordance with the policy, a parental review committee was formed to review the curriculum. Following curriculum approval, health educators were contracted from a community-based organization, and BART was delivered as an afterschool program in the spring of 2012. SHC monitored fidelity and evaluated the effectiveness of BART in this setting. It was found to increase student knowledge of HIV prevention, but did not address other sexual health topics and had limited reach .This presentation will share lessons learned throughout this process, as well as a roadmap to successful implementation of comprehensive sexual health education in schools.