School of Medicine’s Pamela Murray receives 2017 Sex Education Champion Award

Pamela Murray, M.D., professor in the School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, and Julie Downs, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University, received the 2017 Sex Education Champion Award during the Center for Sex Education (CSE) national conference held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, December 6 to 9.

The Education Champion Award recognizes individuals who have provided substantial financial support for the Center and age-appropriate sexuality education. Drs. Murray and Downs are leading a randomized controlled trial evaluating Your Move, a sex education intervention, in comparison to Eat Smart, a nutrition education intervention. Both curricula empower young women to make healthier choices about either sex or nutrition. The program is delivered to groups of girls ages 14 to19. Each group is randomly assigned to one of the two programs.

Your Move incorporates interactive video from Drs. Downs’ and Murray’s evidence-based intervention, Seventeen Days, along with activities, games, and a facilitator-led curriculum developed by the Center for Sex Education. The program teaches young women to make active, informed decisions about sex and contraception, and gives them opportunities to practice these decisions in advance. The program sessions cover decision-making, talking about sex, sexual readiness, condoms, and other types of contraception, STIs, and planning for the future. Your Move aims to improve healthy sexual decision making in young women and is currently under evaluation as part of the Making Healthy Decisions study funded by the Office of Adolescent Health.