Many sex ed teachers may lack training (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A sizable minority of sexeducation teachers does not cover all of the basics, and manylack training to teach sex ed at all, a survey of teachers inone state suggests.

In a study of sex ed teachers at 201 Illinois schools,researchers found that one-third of teachers did not givecomprehensive instruction -- defined as covering the four basictopics of abstinence, birth control, HIV/AIDS and othersexually transmitted diseases.

In addition, 30 percent said they had no special trainingin teaching sex education, and these teachers were less likelyto teach a comprehensive course.

"For this study, we set the bar for comprehensivenessfairly low relative to what most medical and public healthorganizations recommend," lead researcher Dr. Stacy TesslerLindau said in a statement, "and one out of three programsfailed to clear it."

The findings suggest that doctors caring for teenagers mayneed to "fill gaps" in their knowledge of sexual health,according to Lindau and her colleagues at the University ofChicago.

They report the study results in the journal Obstetrics &Gynecology.

The study involved 335 sex ed teachers at Illinois middleschools and high schools. Lindau and her colleagues defined"comprehensive sex education" as courses teaching bothabstinence and contraception, as well as information on HIV andother STDs.

They left out a fifth, more controversial topic oftenrecommended by public health experts: giving studentsinformation on where to go for sexual health services, condomsand birth control.

Overall, two-thirds of teachers met this more relaxeddefinition of comprehensive education. In general, the mostfrequently covered topics were HIV and STDs, which about 96percent of teachers said they addressed. Eighty-nine percent ofteachers covered the topic of abstinence-until-marriage.

Among the least frequently taught subjects werehomosexuality, abortion and information on how to use condomsor birth control properly.

"Most parents support school-based sex education and teensregard it as an important source of information," Lindau said,"yet we found that several important health topics and skillsare omitted, more often than not, from most Illinois publicschool sex-education

criteria."

When it came to discussing condoms and birth control,teachers who omitted the topic generally did so because it wasnot in the official curriculum or because of "school ordistrict policy." About half of teachers also lacked confidencein their ability to teach the topic -- rating their ability asanywhere from "average" to "very poor."

"Our study provides important new data from the teachers'perspective," Dr. Melissa Gilliam, another researcher on thestudy, said in a statement. "It supports other recent studiesshowing that large numbers of teens, especially low-income andyouth of color, received no instruction about birth controlmethods before they first had sex."

SOURCE: Obstetrics & Gynecology, February 2008.