Part two of a report on sex education in Guam’s public school system

By Elizabeth Wells
For Triton’s Call

The Guam Department of Education (GDOE) has implemented sexual education into the health curriculum for high school students with the Safer Choices program, a component of the federal Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP). The PREP program is part of a competitive grant under the Affordable Care Act.

The three-year PREP grant, totaling $387,158, was instituted in high schools in 2013 on a “trial-basis,” said Paul Nededog, project director of Curriculum and Instructional Improvement for GDOE. The program was then fully implemented for the next two years.

With the implementation of the Safer Choices program, Nededog said the high school administrators and GDOE management have begun to address the problem of high teen pregnancy rates and high risk youth behavior on Guam.

“Their drive is to justify and make commitments to continuing the implementation of the Safer Choices Program, to build capacity and developing program strategies more effectively, to improve the health curriculum through the following school years,” Nededog said. “We also have calls from the schools and discussions with GDOE management to continue and have sustainability of the program after the PREP grant ends on Sept. 29, 2016.”

According to the Federal Department of Health and Human Services’ executive summary for the PREP program, the program’s purpose “is to support projects that educate youth between the ages of 10 and 19, and pregnant and parenting youth, under the age 21, on abstinence and contraception for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.”

The Safer Choice component overview of lessons and activities provided by Nededog includes requirements for both abstaining from sex and practicing proper use of contraceptives.

The program was integrated into the health curriculum for high schools in 2013, but has not been added to the standard curriculum for the Guam Public School System. Nededog said sexual education within the curriculum is all funding-based.

Nededog explained the reason some students may have reported lack of education on these matters is because the program has only been integrated into the health program within the last three years. High school students are required to take health class in order to graduate, and the majority of students do so in their freshman or sophomore year.

The program is “evidence-based” and Nededog said GDOE received positive feedback from the past three years. The PREP Performance Measures exit survey reported that 54 percent of the 2,121 students surveyed were much less likely to have sexual intercourse in the next six months, 36 percent reported being much more likely to use a condom, and 27 percent reported being much more likely to use birth control.

“It’s really great that school administrators saw the results and continued to implement the program,” Nededog said.

It was also recently announced that the GDOE has received an additional five-year state PREP grant, which they will use in order to continue with the program.

According to Jesseca Boyer, vice president for policy for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), the PREP program was first authorized in fiscal year 2010. The PREP program represents the first time federal funding allotted to teen pregnancy and HIV/STD prevention programs has been required to be medically accurate, age-appropriate, and informed by evidence.

Boyer said in her opinion, adolescents benefit most from comprehensive sexuality education, which addresses human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior and sexual health—not abstinence-only programs.

“By definition, abstinence-only programs withhold this information and often use fear and shame instead of skill development to promote abstinence until marriage as the only acceptable choice and do not prepare youth to lead sexually healthy lives in the future, including in marriage,” Boyer said.

While the PREP program aims to better educate adolescents on sexual health, many challenges are still prominent not only in Guam but across the United States. According to recent study by the Journal of Adolescent Health, between 2006–2010 and 2011–2013, there were significant declines in adolescent females’ receipt of formal instruction about birth control (70% to 60%), saying no to sex (89% to 82%), sexually transmitted disease (94% to 90%), and HIV/AIDS (89% to 86%). There was a significant decline in males’ receipt of instruction about birth control (61% to 55%).

Boyer explained that the challenges lie in where adolescents are getting, or not getting, their information. With an abundance of information online without quality control, or guidance on how to interpret this information, misinformation about sexual health happens regularly, she said.

“I believe it [high-risk youth behavior] has to do with our societal norms that continue to stigmatize sexuality and frames sex as taboo.” Boyer said. “This combined with the inundation of hyper-sexualized cultural messages in media create an environment in which we fail to provide young people with information to navigate their own development and interactions with others as they wade through conflicting messages about sexuality all around them.”