Sexual Health Scholars Program
An Online Learning Community and Course
Early October 2009 – Early March 2010
Coordinated by:
Rebecca Bak and Shannon O'Hern
Sexual Health Scholars Program Overview:
AMSA firmly believes in comprehensive sexual education for people throughout the life cycle. As such, it is crucial that medical students be taught about sexual health and sexual dysfunction in order to effectively treat and teach their patients. A article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that in 1999, of US adults between the ages of 18-59, 43% of women and 31% of men experience sexual problems. Sexual problems included problems with desire, arousal, orgasm, or pain and were often secondary to other medical conditions. Left untreated, sexual problems appear to have an association with decreased quality of life, depression, interpersonal conflicts, and frequently lead to patient noncompliance with medications. Despite this high prevalence of sexual dysfunction among U.S. adults, many physicians feel inadequately prepared to manage sexual problems and support healthy sexualities, largely because they have not received sufficient training. Indeed, most medical schools do not yet provide a comprehensive curriculum in sexual and reproductive health.
This year, AMSA is launching an ambitious national Sexual Health Scholars Program to begin to address the paucity of attitudes, knowledge, and skills training of American medical students in sexual health education. The first annual Sexual Health Scholars Program will equip a group of dedicated students with a deeper knowledge about a wide variety of sexual health topics, ranging from models of sexuality to sexual problems in chronic disease to sexuality and religion. The online course, which will run October - March, will include lectures by experts, discussions among participants, various media, and collaborative projects. This program will ultimately give participants increased knowledge and skills toward encouraging healthy sexualities, managing sexual concerns, and will help students bring these tools to their individual schools.
Selection Criteria:
The Sexual Health Scholars are a small and versatile group of passionate individuals with different interests, experiences, and levels of knowledge of sexual health.
The application is now closed for SHSP 2009-2010. Please check back early next fall for the next round of applications. (Or sign up for AMSA's LGBT listserv or your regional AMSA listserve to receive an email update next year!)
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this institute, participants will be able to:
Knowledge
- Recognize the historical context of sexuality research
- Restate functional purposes of sexual anatomy components in men and women
- Compare, contrast, and evaluate different models of human sexuality and sexual response
- Analyze different meanings of "sex"
- Define medical and "slang" sexual and reproductive terminology
- Describe important aspects of sexual health needs of different populations, including, but not limited to, different age groups, LGBT individuals, and patients with chronic illnesses
- Describe common sexual concerns and basic treatment options
- Describe evidence behind certain contraceptive technology, including IUDs
Skills
- Propose ways to increase sexual self-esteem in different situations
- Conduct an extensive sexual history interview
- Appropriately tailor sexual history interviews to different age groups
- Screen for sexual assault and domestic violence
- Recognize when a physician can treat an illness and when to refer to a specialist.
- Teach fellow students about sexual health concepts through problem-based
learning - Create a sexual health project that can be utilized by other students interested in
presenting a sexual health topic to classmates and others.
Attitudes
- Analyze one's own biases related to sexuality and examine ways to confront, work with, and/or overcome these biases.
- Examine the interplay between relationships, love, and family.
- Examine certain viewpoints of sex and sexuality within various religions.
- Examine the role of health care providers in treating sexual problems and
promoting healthy sexualities. - Examine the role of medical education in preparing physicians to treat sexual problems and promote health sexualities.
Tentative Curriculum
Our curriculum is primarily based on an extensive curriculum recently developed by the Center for Excellence in Sexual Health and Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine.
The planned curriculum includes, but is not limited to, the following topics: (these topics are subject to change)
- History of Sexual Research
- Skills Building: Sexual History Taking; Communication Skills during the Pelvic Exam; Sexual Abuse and Interpersonal Violence screenings
- Models of Sexuality
- Sexual and reproductive anatomy and physiology: a pro-body approach
- Body image, self-esteem, and sexual self-esteem
- Sexualities across the lifespan
- Sex in the internet age
- Common sexual concerns and treatments<
- Sex is Fun! A Primer on sex toy use and safety
- Sexuality, Disability, and Illness
- Sexual Expressions, focusing on BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism, masochism) and kink
- Sexuality and religion
- Relationships, Love, and Family
- Hot Topics in Fertility, Pregnancy, and Contraception
- Sex Workers: A Domestic and International Perspective
- Sexual Abuse and Interpersonal Violence (IPV)
- Hot Topics in Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs)
- Health concerns in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) communities
Logistics:
Program Dates
- The program will run from approximately early October – early March.
- The course will largely be conducted via webinar, an online-based learning platform.
Homework will usually consist of articles, media clips, short story, or reflection.
Final Project:
- Students will complete a final project that will advocate for improved sexuality education in medicine, either through imparting knowledge about a particular
sexual health topic or through directly engaging with institutions that make
medical curricular decisions.
- The final project can be a “Project in a Box” about a sexual health topic of your choice. You can choose to work with another participant and, depending on the topic, may have the opportunity to be mentored by an AMSA national leader. The Project in a Box can be a Powerpoint, interactive workshop, or other
learning tool and will be placed on the AMSA website (www.amsa.org/gender) for use by other students at their own schools.
- Alternatively, students may choose to focus their final project on advocating for improved sexual health education coverage in medical schools by lobbying the LCME, AAMC and other bodies that decide on curricular requirements.
- Examples of final projects:
- Write a series of cases of common sexual problems with information and resources for how to discuss, diagnose, and treat such issues.
- Create a narrated Powerpoint about one of the topics in (or outside) the curriculum to be used as a distance learning tool for medical students.
- Draft a white paper on sexuality education in medical schools and
distribute it nationally to school administrators.