Biden administration creates $700k grant to create inclusive sex ed for trans male teens

Transgender teen boys and nonbinary youth who were assigned female at birth are at least as likely as cisgender girls to become pregnant, but they don’t always receive appropriate sex education. A health organization is looking to change that, with help from a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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The grant of $698,736 went to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research, based in San Clemente, Calif. The center will take a sexual health program designed to be inclusive of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth and adapt it to reach transmasculine and nonbinary teens. The new program will be known as #TranscendentHealth.

“Youth who are assigned female at birth (AFAB) and identify as non-binary or as trans boys are at risk for negative sexual health outcomes yet are effectively excluded from sexual health programs because gender-diverse youth do not experience the cisgender, heteronormative teen sexual education messaging available to them as salient or applicable,” says a description of the program on the center’s website.

“This lack of programming is likely contributing to obstacles to sexual health: Data suggest that AFAB trans-identified youth may be less likely to use condoms when having sex with people who have penises and are at least as likely as cisgender girls to be pregnant,” it continues.

#TranscendentHealth seeks to address this with inclusive education and support, plus promotion of condom use. The needs of youth vary across the nation, depending on the region and whether they live in an urban or a rural setting, so the program will be tailored to meet those different needs. Such a program is needed more than ever now that some states are preventing teens from accessing sexual health information and gender-affirming care, the description notes.

The program will be based on the center’s work with Girl2Girl, a project designed to provide sexual health info to gay, lesbian, and bi cisgender teen girls through text messaging. It was associated with higher condom use in penile-vaginal sex as well as higher use of other types of contraception, according to the center.

To adapt this into a trans-inclusive program, the center will convene focus groups to identify the factors that affect sexual health decisions among AFAB trans and nonbinary youth. It will monitor how these young people respond to the material and will ultimately test its effectiveness among 700 teens. The goals include increased use of condoms and other means of contraception, uptake of testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and, where needed, use of pre-exposure prophylaxis to prevent HIV transmission.

The work began in September and will continue through June 30, 2027.