Gender and Sexuality Teaching-Learning in a Medical School in Brazil: Promoting Comprehensive Health Care and Human Rights

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to present the structure of a curricular unit for the discussion of gender and sexuality, as well as the initial results of the implementation of this discussion in a medical course of a Brazilian Federal University. The Context / Input / Process / Product (CIPP) model for program evaluation was used to present the structure of this curricular unit, and the heterogeneity of the steps and paths taken for its realization (steps 1, 2 and 3 of the CIPP). It also presents the initial results of the implementation of this discussion on a medical course (Step 4 of the CIPP). In stage 1, a document analysis of the curriculum of the medical school under study was carried out; Stages 2 and 3 give a descriptive narrative of the process of planning and implementing the curricular unit, based on the Paulino & Raimondi Arch for the Teaching-Learning of Public Policies in interface with Care for Health Degrees Programs; In step 4, a retrospective pre-post questionnaire was filled out voluntarily, in the end of the intervention, to the students. It consisted of closed questions, using a 7-point Likert scale to assess the students’ perceptions about the improvement of their competences in the areas of gender and sexuality in health care, following this pedagogical experience. This step also included a descriptive and inferential statistical analysis, using the student’s t-test, the effect size calculation (Cohen’s d), and the general linear model of mixed design, to determine whether there is significant difference between the genders before and after the intervention of each of the questions. The results show that the intervention/curricular unit developed, through the Paulino & Raimondi Arch, was statistically significant, having a significant impact on the improvement of competences, from the students’ perspective, in relation to this theme. This impact was most evident in female gender. It is concluded that this pedagogical strategy proved to be powerful in education for the health professions, promoting integrality in health care regarding gender and sexuality issues, through the improvement of competences related to those issues, thereby promoting the principles of the Unified Health System (SUS – Sistema Único de Saúde), social justice, and human rights.