What is the Healthy Teens Campaign?

The Healthy Teens Campaign is a broad-based coalition made up of education, public health, and faith-based organizations that seek to improve the health and safety of Florida teens through comprehensive sex education. The Healthy Teens Campaign supports The Healthy Teens Act, which will require that Florida public schools receiving state funding provide comprehensive, medically-accurate, and age-appropriate factual information when teaching about sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS, family planning, or pregnancy.

Why The Healthy Teens Campaign?

Florida currently has no statewide standards for teaching sex education. A recent University of Florida study identified the following inadequacies in sex education in Florida:

• Sex education is rarely afforded an effective amount of time.
• It occurs too late in students’ academic careers (usually in 9th or 10th grade).
• There is little uniformity or standards (in terms of training or quality assurance).
• Sex education is not accessible to all students (especially Latinos).
• It fails to adequately address students’ needs.

What is Comprehensive Sex Education?

Comprehensive sex education teaches that abstinence is the only 100% effective way to avoid sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy, but also provides life saving information about other prevention methods such as condoms and contraceptives . It also teaches interpersonal and communication skills and helps young people explore their own values, goals, and options.

Can It Be Done?

The desire and support for comprehensive sex education exists throughout the state, but we need to mobilize this support to make it happen. Organizations across the state are invited to join our Healthy Teens Campaign Coalition, a broad-based group of organizations working together to advocate for comprehensive sex education in Florida public schools. Coalitions are the cornerstones of creating successful change within a community. Joining forces will allow us to better represent the diverse voices of parents, educators, health professionals, members of the faith community, and teens themselves to build a power base with the ability to influence social change and address our common concern.

How Bad Can It Be?

Florida at a glance:

• In Florida, AIDS-related illnesses are the 9th leading cause of death for teens and teens report 31% of all newly acquired cases of sexually transmitted infections.
• Florida has the 2nd highest AIDS case rate in the country, with 4,960 new AIDS cases in 2005 and 100,809 cases overall.
• Florida has the 6th highest syphilis rate of any state, with 724 reported cases in 2005.
• Florida has the 6th highest teen pregnancy rate and each year 48,440 teens get pregnant.
• In 2005, 12% of female high school students and 21% of male high school students in Florida reported having had four or more lifetime sexual partners.

Why Comprehensive Sex Education?

• Comprehensive sex education teaches abstinence as the only certain way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections; encourages family communication about sexuality; and teaches skills for making responsible decisions, including how to avoid unwanted verbal, physical, and sexual advances and how not to make unwanted verbal, physical, and sexual advances.
• Responsible sex education programs do not increase sexual activity, but studies demonstrate they can help young people delay sexual activity and increase contraceptive use among those who are sexually active, as well as decrease the number of partners among those who are sexually active.
• It is irresponsible to withhold information from teens that can protect them from unintended pregnancy and dangerous infections — and that may just save their lives.

Is There Support For Comprehensive Sex Education?

A recent statewide survey of likely voters in Florida found that there is strong broad-based support for teaching comprehensive sex education in Florida public schools.

• An overwhelming 78% of registered voters support a proposal that would require sex education to be taught in Florida public schools; 60% strongly support the proposal.
• When asked about the different approaches to sex education, 73% believe public schools should teach a comprehensive sex education program, compared to only 24% who choose an abstinence-only program. Support for a comprehensive program is strong among voters in all regions of the state, as well as among voters who are Hispanic, African American, senior (age 65+), and parents of school-aged children.
• Over half of all voters say they are more likely to support a state legislator who favors requiring comprehensive sex education in Florida (57% more likely to support – 31% no affect on support – 12% less likely to support).
• Geographically the support for comprehensive sex education is consistent statewide. More than 84% of voters in Miami, Tampa, Orlando and the Panhandle regions say that it is important to teach comprehensive sex education in public schools.

Click here to find out what you can do to support the Healthy Teens Campaign!