WISH-NY and YWCHAC Applaud Mandate for Sex Education in NYC Schools

NEW YORK, Aug. 10, 2011 -- LAC's Women's Initiative to Stop HIV in New York (WISH-NY) and the Young Women of Color HIV/AIDS Coalition (YWCHAC) applaud the announcement from Mayor Bloomberg that his new Young Men's Initiative to aid young Black and Latino men will include a mandate for a semester of sex education in New York City schools.

As long-time advocates in the fight against HIV/AIDS in New York, we have continually pushed for a solid sexual health education in New York City schools -- including the hard-won 1987 mandate for an HIV/AIDS curriculum that has never been consistently implemented. This has meant that in a city whose rate of HIV infection is three times that of the rest of the nation -- with women and girls of color age 13-24 at particular risk -- our kids still don't get the importance of safer sex.

With that struggle painting an increasingly urgent background for the the mayor's announcement, we sincerely hope that this implementation will represent a significant step in the effort to combat the myths and help reduce the number of new infections among this age group. In fact, our groups joined other advocates in urging Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott to move forward on this front in a letter just last week.

"While this new mandate is a start, we hope that it's not the final word from the city," said Tracie M. Gardner, state policy director at the Legal Action Center and the founder of WISH-NY. " As we all have been saying for years, meaningful, medically-sound health education needs to be a continuous process, and one semester is far from that."

YWCHAC Co-director Kymsha Henry agreed, adding: "As advocates, we are so happy to hear this -- but it's not really time to to celebrate until the rates of HIV and STIs among New York's young people decrease. Chancellor Walcott and Deputy Mayor Gibbs, let's make this happen now."