Condom availability in schools: One school district's journey

High rates of sexually transmitted infections (STI) and their concomitant health impacts affect student health. Many adolescents are armed with the facts about protecting themselves from STIs, but do not use well-known strategies (abstinence, condoms) because they do not pre-plan. From a developmental perspective, pre-planning to decrease is risk is inconsistent with adolescence. The CDC encourages better reproductive health education, but also states “children and teens need to know about condom use.” Condom use mitigates the communicable disease risk associated with unprotected sexual encounters. When combined with education, access to information, supplies, support for healthy decision making, and consultation with health care professionals, mitigating the risk associated with sexual behaviors is possible. One school district analyzed their Youth Risk Behavior Survey data to determine their district STI risk profile, and used the data to inform the community, propose policy and practice changes and implement a condom availabilty program. The barriers, challenges, funding, and success of their program will be discussed.