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Background: On January 1, 2016, California implemented the Healthy Youth Act (CHYA), a law that mandates sexual health education in public secondary schools. The Los Angeles County (LAC) Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) Network, a collaboration of schools and public and community agencies, was formed to aid implementation of CHYA-related policies in LAC’s 47 secondary and unified school districts.
Methods: The Los Angeles County Office of Education invited school districts across LAC to meet on January 8 and April 15, 2016, to review CHYA provisions and implementation. The meetings were designed to build the CSE Network into a professional learning community and peer-level resource to help school districts implement best practices for high quality, age-appropriate, medically accurate, comprehensive sexual health education. Attendees received presentations and materials and viewed poster presentations on youth perspectives and local sexual health data.
Results: Participation in the CSE Network meetings was robust, with a total of 57 and 75 attendees at meetings in January and April respectively. Representatives from 22 secondary or unified school districts (47%) attended at least one meeting. Meeting evaluations were overwhelmingly positive (over 3.5 on a scale of 1-4 for professional value) that included comments such as “absolutely a life saver,” with ongoing interest in planned future meetings. Priority topics for future meetings included curriculum selection and strategies to support LGBT youth and other special populations. A neighboring county initiated their own CSE Network as a result of attendance at the LAC CSE Network meetings.
Conclusions: School districts are receptive to a collaborative peer-learning model to support comprehensive sexual health education, however support and resources are critical. CHYA mandates helped mobilize engagement and robust interest suggests potential application to other jurisdictions.