Arkansas’ insufficient sexual health programs are keeping the state’s teen birth rate near the highest in the nation.
That’s according to the “Sexual Health Education in Arkansas: A Blueprint for the future” report released by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families last week.
“A hodgepodge of local policies and inequitable education isn’t going to get us out of our position with one of the nation’s highest teen birth rates, where we’ve been stuck for more than a decade,” writes Olivia Gardner, Education Policy Director for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in the introduction to the report.
The report comes from a coalition of people and organizations whose work touches on sexual health education, organized by AACF last year. The report looks at the current landscape of sexual health education in Arkansas and recommends changes reaching from statewide policies to community services to better serve the state’s kids.
“Looking at all of this through a very pragmatic lens was the center focus of this report,” Gardner said in an interview soon after the report’s release.
Previous reports show Arkansas has one of the highest teen birth rates in the nation.
“That’s not necessarily because teens in Arkansas are having sex more than in other states, it’s just because of a lack of access to contraception and a lack of access to comprehensive sex education,” Gardner said, adding while teen birth rates are falling nationwide, Arkansas remains at the back of the line compared to other states.
Arkansas doesn’t have a statewide policy mandating sexual health education be taught in schools. That means kids who might only learn about sexual health in school are less likely to learn about the dangers of STD’s, effective contraceptives, and how to recognize signs of unhealthy relationships.
Gardner says schools in more urban parts of the state usually have some form of sex ed, but in rural areas, under-resourced schools rarely make sexual health education their top priority.
And when schools do talk about sexual health, they are required to emphasize abstinence as the primary form of birth control.
Gardner suggests educators turn to “comprehensive sex ed” programs to cover a variety of topics over time.
“And so really we’re not talking about just one health course in ninth or tenth grade,” Gardner said. “But what we’ve seen other states implement that works is really that continuum of sex education that is developmentally appropriate at each stage of a young person’s career.”
Gardner says this model divides material into phases to be introduced at appropriate times as kids grow up. Classes for younger kids, for example, might be teach basic child abuse prevention. Gardner says this is important because child abuse happens regardless of whether families talk about it or not.
“We can’t prevent things we don’t talk about, and so if we're able to have these conversations with young children, we can really get ahead of child abuse,” Gardner said.
Gardner says the ongoing model could be tailored to the age and needs of the students, such as teaching middle schoolers about human development and healthy relationships. High schoolers, in turn, could learn about sexual violence prevention, reproduction, and more medically-accurate terms building on years of previous classes.
The report suggests a timeline for state and community leaders to gradually increase access to sexual health education over the next eight years. Gardner acknowledges public reception and the political climate could extend that timeline even further.
“This is just one way Arkansas could work to improve our sexual health education,” she said. “In the beginning we’re making small incremental changes, and by the end we’re trying to achieve a more medically accurate and data-driven and effective sex education system.”
The full report from Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families can be found on their website, aradvocates.org.
