Scaling up a reproductive health curriculum in youth training courses

The Population Council’s Frontiers in Reproductive Health (FRONTIERS) program, in collaboration with the Bangladesh Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Urban Family Health Partnership, and two nongovernmental service delivery partners, carried out the Global Youth project in northwestern Bangladesh from 1999–2003. The important lesson learned from that project was that reproductive health education could increase reproductive health knowledge in adolescents, particularly in areas related to reproductive biology, family planning, pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, HIV, and AIDS. The population-based surveys further showed that contrary to common belief, reproductive health education does not increase sexual activity; instead it increases the use of condoms among sexually active youth, increases reproductive health knowledge, improves life skills, and positively changes the attitudes of the youth. Results also revealed that training of trainers and training materials, especially the transparencies, curriculum, and question boxes, enabled teachers to effectively impart reproductive health education. The study recommends further scaling up of this tested curriculum to other nonresidential training centers of the Department of Youth Development in order to ensure maximum utilization of limited resources, and makes several recommendations to guide these efforts