This is the first book to provide a multidisciplinary and global overview of evidence-based sexuality education (SE) programs and practices. Readers are introduced to the fundamentals of creating effective programs to prepare them to design new or implement existing programs that promote healthy sexual attitudes and relationships. Noted contributors from various disciplines critically evaluate evidence –based programs from around the globe and through the lifespan. Examples and discussion questions encourage application of the material. Guidance for those who wish to design, implement, and evaluate SE programs in various social contexts is provided. Each chapter follows a consistent structure so readers can easily compare programs: Learning Goals; Introduction; Conclusion; Key Points; Discussion Questions; and Additional Resources. The editor taught human sexuality and family life education courses for years. This book reviews the key information that his students needed to become competent professionals. Highlights of the book’s coverage include: Interdisciplinary, comprehensive summary of evidence-based SE programs in one volume. Prepares readers for professional practice as a Certified Family Life Educator (CFLE) or sex educator by highlighting the fundamentals of developing and implementing SE programs. Exposes readers to evidence-based SE programs from various social contexts including families, schools, communities, and religious institutions. Considers the developmental context of SE across the lifespan along with programs for LGBT individuals and persons with disabilities. Critically reviews SE programs from around the world including the US, Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and other developing countries. The book opens with an historical overview. Part I focus on general frameworks of sexuality education including UNESCO’s International Technical Guidelines. How to develop, deliver, and implement evidence based SE programs, including ethical concerns, are explored in Part II. Part III exposes readers to evidence-based programs in various social contexts--families, schools, communities, and religious institutions. Part IV considers the developmental context of SE from early childhood through adolescence and adulthood along with programs for LGBT individuals and persons with disabilities. Part V examines diverse global contexts from the US, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and other developing countries. The book concludes with future trends and directions. Ideal for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses in sex education, sexual health, human sexuality, sex or marriage counseling, intimate relationships, family life education, or home, school, and community services taught in human development and family studies, psychology, social work, health education, nursing, education, and religion, and in seminaries and family clinics, the book also serves as a resource for practitioners, counselors, researchers, clergy members, and policy makers interested in evidence based SE programs, or those seeking to become CFLEs or sexuality educators.

Sexuality Education prepares students planning to be sexuality educators and administrators, as well as seasoned teaching professionals seeking current information and successful methods for teaching elementary, secondary and college students about sexuality with confidence. Sexuality Education Theory and Practice strikes a balance between content and instructional strategies that help students assess their own attitudes and knowledge of human sexuality. Emphasizing that sex education is an integral part of a comprehensive health education program, the text is ideal for helping students from a variety of backgrounds teach sexuality to learners of all ages.

This book explores the interdependence of health and education, and how optimising this important relationship provides the foundation for achieving improved life outcomes from birth into adulthood. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, it draws on bio-medical, epidemiological, educational, psychological and economic evidence to demonstrate the benefits of the reflexive, positive associations between good health and educational attainment over the life course. In this, it offers readers insights into the complex nature of the nexus between health and education and how this relationship influences development. Health and Education Interdependence: Thriving from Birth to Adulthood is essential reading for education and health researchers and policymakers, teachers and public health and health promotion practitioners, as well as students studying in these fields.

This quick and user-friendly guide is your ready reference for information on palliative care.

Recently there has been much debate over the adoption, implementation, and maintenance of comprehensive health and sexuality education programs in Massachusetts public schools. Advocates of school-based comprehensive health education programs often use a public health approach to substantiate their position. They cite national and statewide statistics about adolescent sexual activity and unsafe sexual practice as a basis for providing students with the facts and the skills to make decisions to prevent pregnancy and the transmission of sexually-transmitted diseases. Opponents often speak about the parents' role in educating their sons and daughters and object to public school instruction that regards homosexuality and safe sex as acceptable choices. In the literature, many models of community organization focus on the decision-making structure within the community, rather than on the process of social change. Therefore, we often know who makes community decisions, without knowing much about how and why these decisions are made. In this study the process of social change is explored by conducting comparative case studies of two Massachusetts communities.

For more than a century, the question of how adolescents should be taught about their emerging sexuality and sexual health has been debated in schools, within communities, and across the public sphere. Today, most efforts to provide formal sexuality education fall under two models: abstinence-only programs, which promote the benefits of restraint from sexual activity, or abstinence-plus programs, which encourage abstinence and offer lessons on safer sexual practices. The lack of consistent, compelling evidence for these widely used approaches has reinforced the need, among some leaders in the field, to reconsider the paradigm as a whole. They advocate for a shift from a narrow emphasis on reducing the risks of adolescent sexual activity toward a positive, holistic emphasis on the healthy sexual development of young people. The term "rights-based" has become increasingly linked to this concept of a more comprehensive approach to sexuality education. Discussions of a rights-based approach to sexuality education have become increasingly common in both international and U.S. contexts over the past decade. Among a small but growing group of program developers, funders, health educators, and scholars, the idea of addressing contextual factors such as gender norms, power differentials, and sexual rights within sexuality education has gained enthusiastic backing. While preliminary evidence from basic science and theoretical guidance lend support to this interest, there is little direct evidence for concluding that that this new approach is preferable to existing models. This dissertation was developed to offer a critical exploration of this new paradigm for sexuality education. In the first paper, "A Rights-Based Approach to Sexuality Education: Conceptualization, Clarification and Challenges," I present a conceptual definition for a rights-based approach to sexuality education that is consistent with and gives structure for understanding the guidelines, curricula, research, and theory that have been cited as informing the approach. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews with experts, I propose a rights-based approach as the intersection of four elements: 1) an underlying principle guiding the provision of sexuality education to youth as holders of sexual rights and responsibilities; 2) an expansion of programmatic goals beyond reducing unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections; 3) a broadening of curriculum content to include issues such as gender norms, sexual orientation, sexual expression and pleasure, violence, and individual rights and responsibilities in relationships; and 4) a participatory teaching strategy that engages youth in critical thinking about their sexuality and sexual choices. In the second and third papers, I focus on one construct - adolescents' underlying attitudes about their sexual rights in relationships - of particular importance for the development, implementation, and evaluation of future rights-based sexuality education programs. In "Adolescents' Attitudes about Rights in Sexual Relationships: Measure Development and Psychometric Assessment," I describe the development of self-report survey measures that address adolescents' attitudes about their rights in steady and casual sexual relationships, and assess their psychometric properties using both classical test theory (CTT) and item response modeling (IRM) approaches. The final measures show evidence of psychometric soundness, including reliability and validity, which encourages their use in both epidemiological studies of adolescent sexual behavior and evaluations of rights-based sexuality education programs. In the third paper, "Understanding Adolescents' Attitudes about Rights in Sexual Relationships," I examine how adolescents' attitudes about their sexual relationship rights vary by demographic and behavioral characteristics, in contexts with a steady or casual sexual partner, and across the different dimensions of sexual relationship rights. Adolescents report strong support for sexual relationship rights across complex hypothetical situations, with some notable differences by individual characteristics and relationship contexts. I also investigate a theorized causal connection between attitudes about their sexual relationship rights and communication with sexual partners using a series of regression models. These analyses support a causal relationship between attitudes about rights to express sexual engagement needs and partner communication, net of plausible alternative explanations and partially mediated by comfort communicating with sexual partners. In contrast, there was no evidence to support an association between adolescents' attitudes about their rights to refuse sexual activity or rights to establish relationship autonomy and their communication with sexual partners. As a whole, this dissertation provides a critical examination of the rights-based approach to sexuality education, asking research questions not previously addressed in the literature and suggesting a number of avenues for future sexual health promotion efforts.