Sexual Health Education
From Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education
Research consistently indicates that positive sexual health outcomes are most likely to occur when sexual health education effectively integrates knowledge, motivation, skill-building opportunities and environmental supports for sexual health. Effective sexual health education involves a combination of educational experiences that will enable:
Acquisition of knowledge
- Information relevant to personal sexual health
- Understanding of individual and cultural differences in beliefs about sexual health
- Information about ways to achieve/maintain sexual health
Development of motivation/personal insight
- Acceptance of one's own sexuality
- Development of positive attitudes toward sexual health-promoting behaviour
- Critical consciousness raising about sexual health issues
Development of skills that support sexual health
- Ability to formulate age-appropriate sexual health goals
- Ability to carry out sexual health-promoting behaviours to reach those goals
- Ability to evaluate and modify one's sexual health plan as necessary
Creation of environment conducive to sexual health
- Developing personal awareness of environmental influences on sexual health
- Acquiring skills needed to identify and influence the social practices/policies/structures that affect sexual health
To obtain a copy of Canadian Guidelines for Sexual Health Education, contact :
Division of STD Control, Bureau of communicable Disease Epidemiology, LCDC, Health Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0L2
Tel: (613) 957-1342
Fax: (613) 957-0381
Adapted from Healthier Youth, vol 7 no 1 1996, McCreary centre Society