Inspiration
Sexual education still remains a taboo topic in most areas of the US. However, statistics show that cases of STDs in young adults have doubled in the past decade and almost half the percentage of sexually active young adults were not taking proper precautions during sexual intercourse. This shows a heavy need for formal education. Research published by the Journal of Adolescent Health External shows that when sex education is comprehensive, students feel more informed, make safer choices and have healthier outcomes — resulting in fewer unplanned pregnancies and more protection against sexually transmitted diseases and infections.
We performed an analysis of the efficacy of sexual education on girls across the United States using dual contraceptive nonuse in youth, unintended pregnancy, teen births, and high-risk HIV behaviors in women. Using values of number of women out of 1000 in each state, we generated values representative of the quality and efficacy of sexual education in the united states. We saw that there is a wide range of values showing that there is a disparity in education across the US. Our site, Sex Ed, works to combat this disparity by informing young women about making healthy decisions about sex and sexuality throughout their lives.
What it does
Our idea is to create a platform for women and non binary young adults to connect professionals - gynecologists and sexual educators - to adolescents seeking answers to questions pertaining to their sexual health. We foresee our website to be a platform where adolescents can interact with content posted by professionals, each of whom have their own channels. We also aim to post tutorials on basic sexual health and hygiene, and the website also enables young adults to communicate and connect with each other. Lastly, we help them connect to their nearest health providers in case they need to seek in-person professional help.
How we built it
We decided what features would be feasible during the timeframe of this hackathon, and then we performed data analysis and researched the topic further to come up with our website.
Challenges we ran into
We struggled with the styling of individual sections of our site. We also attempted to integrate an API so that users would be able to connect with potential healthcare providers, but a relevant public API was down and other APIs were only accessible to hospitals and organizations.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We have a functioning website that achieves our main goal.
What we learned
We learned about disparities in domestic sex education as well as troublshooting with various technologies.
What's next for Sex Ed Demystified
We are planning on incorporating an API and adding more data so that users can have a more personalized experience.
Note: Our domain is SexEdu.tech.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.