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Sex Education in Italy: An Overview of 15 Years of Projects in Primary and Secondary Schools
School-based sex education is essential to improve the knowledge and behavior of young people. Unlike most European countries, sex education in Italy is not compulsory in the school curriculum. Therefore, to assess potential gaps, the main aim of this study was to explore Italian regional initiative...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer US
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10125923/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36749406 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02541-6 |
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author | Lo Moro, Giuseppina Bert, Fabrizio Cappelletti, Toni Elhadidy, Heba Safwat Mhmoued Abdo Scaioli, Giacomo Siliquini, Roberta |
author_facet | Lo Moro, Giuseppina Bert, Fabrizio Cappelletti, Toni Elhadidy, Heba Safwat Mhmoued Abdo Scaioli, Giacomo Siliquini, Roberta |
author_sort | Lo Moro, Giuseppina |
collection | PubMed |
description | School-based sex education is essential to improve the knowledge and behavior of young people. Unlike most European countries, sex education in Italy is not compulsory in the school curriculum. Therefore, to assess potential gaps, the main aim of this study was to explore Italian regional initiatives about sex education. A review of gray literature from 2006 to 2021 was conducted in December 2021 on national databases and institutional websites of each Italian region, during which official documents on regional sex education programs were selected. Moreover, a rapid systematic review was carried out in scientific databases to find more information. For both reviews, the sex education topics recommended by UNESCO were used for extracting and analyzing data. A total of 12 Italian regions out of 20 had at least one sex education program, for a total of 39 projects. Overall, all the topics identified by UNESCO have been covered, with considerable differences between northern, central, and southern Italy. Contraception, love, marriage, partnerships, and family were the main topics discussed (hosted in 92% of the regions). Only 25% of the regions discussed pregnancy and birth. Disability was the least debated topic (17%). The rapid systematic review showed that relevant improvements were achieved after sex education interventions. In conclusion, this study underlined important limitations to the implementation of school-based sex education in Italy. Hence, it is necessary to increase sex education interventions to reach adequate standards and flatten the differences not only between Italian regions but also between Italy and other European countries. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10508-023-02541-6. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10125923 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Springer US |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-101259232023-04-26 Sex Education in Italy: An Overview of 15 Years of Projects in Primary and Secondary Schools Lo Moro, Giuseppina Bert, Fabrizio Cappelletti, Toni Elhadidy, Heba Safwat Mhmoued Abdo Scaioli, Giacomo Siliquini, Roberta Arch Sex Behav Original Paper School-based sex education is essential to improve the knowledge and behavior of young people. Unlike most European countries, sex education in Italy is not compulsory in the school curriculum. Therefore, to assess potential gaps, the main aim of this study was to explore Italian regional initiatives about sex education. A review of gray literature from 2006 to 2021 was conducted in December 2021 on national databases and institutional websites of each Italian region, during which official documents on regional sex education programs were selected. Moreover, a rapid systematic review was carried out in scientific databases to find more information. For both reviews, the sex education topics recommended by UNESCO were used for extracting and analyzing data. A total of 12 Italian regions out of 20 had at least one sex education program, for a total of 39 projects. Overall, all the topics identified by UNESCO have been covered, with considerable differences between northern, central, and southern Italy. Contraception, love, marriage, partnerships, and family were the main topics discussed (hosted in 92% of the regions). Only 25% of the regions discussed pregnancy and birth. Disability was the least debated topic (17%). The rapid systematic review showed that relevant improvements were achieved after sex education interventions. In conclusion, this study underlined important limitations to the implementation of school-based sex education in Italy. Hence, it is necessary to increase sex education interventions to reach adequate standards and flatten the differences not only between Italian regions but also between Italy and other European countries. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10508-023-02541-6. Springer US 2023-02-07 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC10125923/ /pubmed/36749406 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02541-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Original Paper Lo Moro, Giuseppina Bert, Fabrizio Cappelletti, Toni Elhadidy, Heba Safwat Mhmoued Abdo Scaioli, Giacomo Siliquini, Roberta Sex Education in Italy: An Overview of 15 Years of Projects in Primary and Secondary Schools |
title | Sex Education in Italy: An Overview of 15 Years of Projects in Primary and Secondary Schools |
title_full | Sex Education in Italy: An Overview of 15 Years of Projects in Primary and Secondary Schools |
title_fullStr | Sex Education in Italy: An Overview of 15 Years of Projects in Primary and Secondary Schools |
title_full_unstemmed | Sex Education in Italy: An Overview of 15 Years of Projects in Primary and Secondary Schools |
title_short | Sex Education in Italy: An Overview of 15 Years of Projects in Primary and Secondary Schools |
title_sort | sex education in italy: an overview of 15 years of projects in primary and secondary schools |
topic | Original Paper |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10125923/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36749406 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02541-6 |
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