Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts

Intervention Name: Get Real: Comprehensive Sex Education That Works (Get Real)

Project Overview: The Get Real high school curriculum is a comprehensive, inclusive, and trauma-informed program designed for and delivered in early high school. The curriculum consists of 11 weekly 45-minute lessons that emphasize key personal and interpersonal social and emotional learning skills for healthy relationships. It also covers topics of anatomy, protection methods, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), examination of gender roles and perceived responsibility, and gender and sexual identity. Get Real lessons include skills-based activities for students to practice what they learn throughout the curriculum, such as opportunities to engage in paired, small, and large group discussions; role plays; group activities; and gallery walks with prompts to develop critical thinking and application of the material. Three family activities accompany the curriculum, in the form of student-led interviews with a parent or other caring adult to promote conversation about personal, family, and community values and beliefs about sex and sexuality. Get Real also includes introspective journaling assignments for students, designed to help students apply newly gained knowledge to their individual lives. Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts will partner with Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio and Wellesley Centers for Women to train a team of intervention facilitators to implement Get Real with 75 classrooms; survey 150 counterfactual and intervention classrooms through pre-, post-, and 9-month follow up surveys; rigorously evaluate the intervention through a randomized control trial; create fact sheets to describe the intervention and evaluation; publish in peer-reviewed journals, and present findings at professional conferences.

Intervention Population of Focus: Youth ages 14-19

Intervention Type (e.g., curriculum, web-based, training, other): Curriculum and opportunities for family engagement