The Center for Health and Learning provides a variety of services in support of Sexual Health in the state of Vermont.

Exemplary Sexual Health Education

Working with the Agency of Education, CHL is currently conducting support for the creation of statewide and local School Health Advisory Councils (SHACs), with a focus on promoting school based sexual health promotion and HIV and other STD prevention programs.

As part of this contract, CHL will assist with the dissemination of evidence-based curricula and best practices for exemplary sexual health education (ESHE), including training local representatives to then train their school boards and communities on the importance of ESHE. CHL will guide the statewide SHAC in its development, and administer the quarterly meetings.

Supporting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning Youth

Throughout CHL’s programming, the increased vulnerability of LGBTQ youth is recognized and efforts to support this population are conducted through suicide prevention and general training education.

CHL contracted with the Trevor Project to provide a Training of Trainers in Vermont to train a cadre of adults in the Trevor Project CARES suicide prevention program. Since that time, CHL has organized and hosted two “Supporting Queer Youth” trainings per year, with a designated audience of youth serving professionals but open to all interested parties.

The “Supporting Queer Youth” trainings are conducted in partnership with Outright Vermont, Vermont’s statewide queer youth advocacy and services organization. Expert trainers from Outright Vermont provide Queer 101, How to be an Ally, and Trevor Project CARES Suicide Prevention as three intertwined workshops in a one-day training.

KEY DEFINITIONS 

• The terms transgender and cisgender are not indicative of sexual orientation, hormonal makeup, physical anatomy, or gender expression — how one is perceived in daily life. 
• Sexual Orientation: A persons enduring physical, romantic, emotional, and/or other form of attraction to others.
• Gender Identity: One’s internal sense of being male, female, neither of these, both, or other gender(s). 
• Transgender/Trans: An umbrella adjective for people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. 
• Cisgender/Cis: An adjective that means “identifies as their sex assigned at birth.” 

Source: Outright Vermont

Note: Questioning refers to youth that are contemplating their Orientation or Identity and is sometimes denoted as LGBTQ.

This newly released data brief points out the health disparities faced by transgender youth in VT based on 2017 YRBS data.  Transgender youth face much higher risks for mental health problems. More emphasis needs to be placed for GLBTQ on family and community acceptance and using youth as resources. 

HIV/AIDS, Sexually Transmitted Diseases & Hepatitis C Prevention

CHL is the designated contracted agency with the Vermont Department of Health’s HIV/AIDS, STD, and Hepatitis C Program. Read more about this Program here.

Personal Responsibility Education Program

Partnering with the Vermont Department of Health, CHL administers the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) training for the multiple grantees that provide this sexual health education program to at-risk youth between the ages of 10 and 19 throughout the state. PREP is an evidence-based curriculum in sexual health and decision-making.