This article looks at the knowledge level about sexually transmitted illnesses, pregnancy prevention and other information on sex education among young people.
This is something that is constant battle back and forth – should parents educate, should the schools educate, should the health care professionals educate? You know, I think- my opinion is I don’t care who educates them, somebody needs to. If anybody along the way is dropping the ball, if the parents aren’t adequately educating their kids and I suspect that is most often the case of then those children don’t get good information from other sources- they end up making even worse choices.
We know teenagers engage in risky behavior. The only thing that seems to hold that back is giving them more information about what’s too risky and how to protect themselves should they choose risky behaviors. I think it’s unrealistic to think that we’re going to get any of them to not engage in any risky behaviors at all.
Of course there are kids out there that are just exemplary students and live the perfect life and lifestyle but that’s not the norm and we can sit there and say “just say no” but unfortunately that is not going to be always realistic when the time comes to make risky decisions, make risky choices and there’s no parent or adult around to help them with those decisions, it is their own knowledge level that makes the difference.
So there’s information on Chlamydia rates rising over the last few years, Gonorrhea rates are on the increase and this is a study looking at the Chicago area that these rates are up and more comprehensive education on HIV, AIDS, sexually transmitted illnesses and pregnancy prevention needs to be increased in these schools in that area because apparently, they’re not getting the education from anywhere else. So, it’s something to keep in mind and something that we should always be aware of.
We should be gauging the level of education of our patients regarding all kinds of health care issues whether its “do you know how to pick healthy foods from a menu?”, “do you have information on little changes you can make to your diet that can have big impacts on your overall health?” These are questions we should be asking every time we have a patient depending on where they are in their life cycle and applying that process to every patient we meet so that we can meet their needs wherever they are and for teenagers, that need is really more prevalent, easy to get to better education and resources to keep them safe in sexual situations.
