EXCLUSIVE: Children’s Hospital Pilots Sex-Ed Program Where Students Are Teachers
Megan Brock and Laurel Duggan on July 15, 2023
Lurie Children’s Hospital is testing out a sex education program co-taught by current and recently graduated Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students, according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation through a public records request.
Lurie offers a variety of sex education programs to schools in Chicago, including a Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) workshop series covering “gender-affirming” sexual communication, healthy LGBTQ relationships, anal sex, HIV and the HIV-prevention medicine PrEP, according to its website. One Lurie employee asked a CPS elementary school teacher in a March 21 email if her school was interested in a GSA sex ed program co-taught by “youth leaders” that the hospital was testing out.
“I wanted to reach out to see if there would be any interest in a sex education session for the GSA at your school. Our middle school GSA sex education builds really well on the sex education students received and reviews consent and communication, safer sex methods, and HIV and PrEP,” Adam Davies, a Youth Engagement program coordinator at Lurie, said in the email to John B. Murphy Elementary School teacher Chiara Kearney.
“This year we’re trying out a new program where we have youth leaders who are currently or recently graduated CPS students who will be co-teaching GSA sex education with us. We’re really excited to offer it! Could you connect me with the GSA advisor to talk more?” the email read.
Kearney agreed to pass along the email to her principal and thanked Davies for thinking of her school.
A sex ed program coordinator emailed fourth-grade teachers at John B. Murphy Elementary School a week later expressing excitement about plans to join students at the school on May 4, along with links to surveys for fourth-grade students to take both before and after the program. It is unclear whether Youth Leaders were involved in the program.
The Lurie program also used Youth Leaders to give a sex ed presentation at a May educational summit on diversity hosted by CPS called the Galaxy Summit. In one email exchange between a sexual health specialist at CPS and several Lurie employees, the hospital staff explain Lurie will pay $1,000 total to Youth Leaders in HIV to cover youth travel and payment for adult staff time for Galaxy Summit.
A recent DCNF investigation found that Lurie paid one of its employees $500 to give a drag performance at the same summit.
Lurie Children’s Hospital and CPS did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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