Us & Them: Sex Ed for Grown-Ups

In this program, I speak with Dr. Michael Ross, who’s chair of the University of Minnesota’s program for Sexual Health Education in the department of family medicine.  He says so much of sexual health education is devoted to adolescents and maybe a more effective way to teach young people is to better educate adults. 

Ross believes the best way to do this is to require health care professionals to have better training in sexual health education.  He says one of the reasons the public is poorly informed about sexual health is because healthcare professionals often have had poor training. 

Ross believes that only half of U.S. medical schools have an adequate sexual health education curriculum.  And that our nursing schools have an even lower rate of training.  And unless we educate the educators, we’re not going to get very far.  He is trying to build program at UM that will address this challenge and that they might become a model for the nation.

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