Young people in Benin are starting to insist on their sexual and reproductive health rights, thanks to campaigners like Joannie Bewa. Dr Bewa talks to Fiona Fleck.

This review presents the findings from controlled school-based sex education interventions published in the last 15 years in the US. The effects of the interventions in promoting abstinent behavior reported in 12 controlled studies were included in the meta-analysis. The results of the analysis indicated a very small overall effect of the interventions in abstinent behavior. Moderator analysis ...

BACKGROUND Since 2007, sex has been the major mode of HIV transmission in China, accounting for 75% of new infections in 2009. Reducing sexual transmission is a major challenge for China in controling the HIV epidemic. METHODS This article discusses the pilot programmes that have guided the expansion of sex education and behavioural interventions to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV in Ch...

In this paper, we examine the ways that early adolescents talked, interacted, and made references to events in their individual and collective lives during photography-based focus groups about sexuality and relationships. Twenty-three participants (10 boys and 13 girls) were recruited from three urban schools participating in a comprehensive sex education impact evaluation in the Northeast. We ...

Teachers' attitudes towards sexuality education are among the important predictors of their willingness to teach sexuality education programmes in schools. While there is a plethora of studies on teachers' attitudes towards sexuality in developed countries, there is a paucity of such studies in sub-Saharan Africa in general and Tanzania in particular.  This study examined teachers' attitudes to...

The high level of HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa has led to an increased interest in understanding the determinants of sexual activity among young people, who are at high risk of sexually transmitted infections. The present study examined sociodemographic, behavioral, and psychosocial factors associated with heterosexual activity among a sample of 3556 male and female high-school students ...

Japan is widely perceived to have a low level of HIV occurrence; however, its HIV epidemics also have been the subject of considerable misunderstanding globally. I used a ground truthing conceptual framework to meet two aims: first, to determine how accurately official surveillance data represented Japan's two largest epidemics (urban Kansai and Tokyo) as understood and experienced on the groun...

In the absence of effective sex education in the United States, the media have arguably become the leading sex educator for children and teenagers. Considerable research now exists that attests to the ability of the media to influence adolescents' attitudes and beliefs about sex and sexuality. In addition, new research has found a significant link between exposure to sexual content in the media...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to determine students' exposure to sex education and identify students' perceptions of accessibility to sexual health advice and their preferences in implementing sex education. METHODS A cross-sectional study was carried out in junior colleges in Mumbai in 2010. The self-administered questionnaire investigated male and female students' (aged 15-17) exposu...