Dr. Sreevidya M View Bio

12 August 2021 5 Minutes

Author Bio

Dr. Sreevidya M

Designation :BAMS Physician

A physician in general medicine with more than 5 years of clinical experience to her credit.

Sex education provides people with the knowledge, skills, and motivation they need to make healthy sex and sexuality decisions. With 1.2 million people served each year, Planned Parenthood is the nation's largest provider of sex education. High-quality teaching and learning about a wide range of topics relating to sex and sexuality, as well as examining attitudes and views about those topics and obtaining the skills needed to navigate relationships and maintain one's own sexual health, constitutes sex education. Sex education can take place in the classroom, in the community, or online.

What is Comprehensive Sex Education?

A curriculum-based approach of teaching and learning about the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social elements of sexuality is known as comprehensive sexuality education (CSE). Its goal is to provide knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to children and young people that will enable them to realise their health, well-being, and dignity, as well as create respectful social and sexual interactions.

Why do youngsters need CSE?

As they advance from childhood to adulthood, too many young people are given confused and contradictory information about relationships and sex. As a result, there is a growing desire among young people for accurate information that will help them live a safe, productive, and satisfying life. CSE meets this demand when it is delivered well, empowering young people to make informed decisions about relationships and sexuality and navigating a world where gender-based violence, gender inequality, early and unintended pregnancies, HIV, and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) continue to pose serious health and well-being risks.

CSE is critical in addressing children's and young people's health and well-being. CSE uses a learner-centred approach to provide age-appropriate and phased education on human rights, gender equality, relationships, reproduction, sexual behaviour risks, and disease prevention for children and young people, as well as an opportunity to present sexuality in a positive light, emphasising values such as respect, inclusion, non-discrimination, and equality.

What Changes does CSE have on youngsters and teens?

• Sexuality education offers good outcomes, such as enhancing young people's understanding and attitudes about sexual and reproductive health and behaviours.
• Sexuality education, whether provided in or out of schools, has been shown to have no effect on sexual activity, sexual risk-taking, or STI/HIV infection rates.
• Abstinence-only programmes have been demonstrated to be ineffective at delaying sexual initiation, reducing the frequency of sex, and reducing the number of sexual partners. Effective programmes combine a focus on delaying sexual behaviour with additional topics.
• Gender-focused programmes outperform gender-blind programmes in terms of attaining health outcomes like lowering unwanted pregnancy rates and STI rates.
• When school-based programmes are supplemented by parental and teacher involvement, training institutes, and youth-friendly services, sexuality education has the greatest impact.