Sexual Health Awareness and Practices in Young Adults: A Case Study

There is a collective agreement on having an age-appropriate sex education curriculum. However, proper implementation is lacking in most education boards around the world. This study explores the level of sexual health awareness and practices of young adults at the University of Delhi. We analysed the current awareness levels of these adults and tried to understand if and why there is a gap in their understanding through three components of sex education: awareness, practice and interaction with their partners and peers. Our study unfolds several layers of sex education or the lack of it, and argues for an immediate basic sex education programme to be incorporated into schools from the elementary level. Over 50% of participants learned about human reproduction before the 8th grade, primarily through informal sources. Our findings illustrate very low awareness of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and contraception methods in the young adults, even for HIV/AIDS, the awareness percentage is about half of the responses, which is astonishing. The study also reveals a lack of awareness about breastfeeding and HIV/AIDS, which could be due to earlier public advertisements not mentioning the same. Such a lack of awareness about sexual reproduction and STDs underlines the need for a comprehensive sex education programme in schools.