Young People Want Better Sexual Health Care

Sexual health care providers in B.C. need to switch things up to improve care for young people aged 15 to 29, according to a new report.

The report was produced by Options for Sexual Health and the University of British Columbia, with funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Researchers spoke with 91 young people and 47 sexual health-care providers and focused on rural, remote and underserved communities.

Over the last decade B.C. has made some big strides towards improving services for sexual and reproductive health, including introducing mail-order cancer screening , making medication for abortion more widely available , making all contraceptives free and able to be prescribed by a pharmacist, and introducing GetCheckedOnline , which allows people to access screening for sexually transmitted infections without providing their ID.

Still, rates of sexually transmitted infections, sexual violence, unplanned pregnancies and early-age parenting remain disproportionately high in rural, remote and mixed urban-rural settings and equity-deserving communities, the report said.

Young people today do not know more about sexual health than their peers did 10 or 20 years ago, Rachel Bergen, who led the report as sexual health evaluation project lead at UBC, told The Tyee.

And while sex education in schools is provincially mandated, it remains spotty or even non-existent, often centred on heterosexual relationships and focused on fear and stigma, the report said.

Young people also reported not knowing what services were available or how to access clinics, especially in small towns where privacy and transportation are a challenge.

Access to the wealth of information on the internet also isn’t as helpful as it may seem: young people are unsure about what online sources to trust.

“Youth spoke a lot about being overwhelmed by information and how hard it can be to find reliable information,” Bergen said.

“We heard a lot about misinformation and scary stories and anecdotes that you might see on social media that warp youth’s perspectives on sexual health.”

That’s a problem because sexual and reproductive health are a fundamental part of well-being — especially for young people, for their development and life trajectories, she added.

Sexual health care can include information; education; contraception; STI prevention, screening and treatment; cancer screening; abortion care; and pregnancy care.

To figure out how to better serve this young demographic, researchers spoke with young people and sexual health providers in Fernie, Vernon, Whistler, Maple Ridge, the Comox Valley, Salt Spring Island, the Clayoquot Sound region and newcomer communities in the Lower Mainland.

The main takeaway from the report is that young people want safe, inclusive and youth-centred sexual health care, with providers who understand their lived experiences, take time to build relationships, and create spaces that feel culturally safe, inclusive and designed around the needs of young people.