YS 604 - Adolescent Sexual Health (3 Credits)

Prerequisite: YS 600   and YS 610  
This course aims to understand individual, cultural, and social factors that influence young people’s healthy sexual development.

The course is organized around a number of factors that both support and impede the sexual health and development of young people and permits study of a wide range of issues that affect young people and their sexuality. The course covers biological and hormonal development, how peers and partners can affect adolescent sexual health, how the media and popular culture influence sexual development, the role of families and schools, and explores social policies and laws that create the political infrastructure in which adolescents develop. Particular attention is paid to specific characteristics that affect sexual health, including gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status and how these affect what adolescents learn about themselves, their bodies, and the potential for being a healthy sexual adult. The structure of this course encourages students to develop a set of critical skills that will allow them to understand how young people are affected by both public and private issues and decisions. The ability to understand how sexual health is both an individual and a social phenomenon is an important skill for students to learn.