Real Talk Provides Teens with CDC Recommended Health Content and Fills Critical Gaps
Today, we announced a new report titled “Aligning Real Talk Stories with the CDC National Health Education Standards.” Real Talk provides inclusive, trauma-informed, medically-accurate, and developmentally appropriate health content for youth in the form of crowdsourced stories. This report describes the results of a review conducted in Summer 2020 to ensure the stories posted to the Real Talk app align with the National Health Education Standards Knowledge Expectations for Grades 6-8.
The National Health Education Standards (NHES) are a set of standards developed by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Public Health Association, and others, to promote health-enhancing behaviors for school-aged youth. They provide written expectations for what students should know and be able to do at particular grade levels to promote optimal health. The review focused on aligning Real Talk stories with the knowledge standards for two health topics areas: Sexual Health and Mental and Emotional Health. Below we share key findings from this report.
Real Talk provides developmentally appropriate content that aligns with CDC’s recommendations for high quality education programming for adolescents. Nearly 80% of the knowledge standards reviewed had at least one aligned Real Talk story, including 67% of Sexual Health knowledge standards and 94% of Mental and Emotional Health knowledge standards.
Real Talk fills important content gaps that youth may not be exposed to in traditional health education programming. Some Real Talk stories did not align to any knowledge standards. These stories covered a range of key topics for healthy adolescent development that are not currently included in the NHES recommendations for health education curricula. For example, STIs/HIV make up one third of all Sexual Health knowledge standards, but there are no standards focused on explaining sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, and how these components may impact health.
New research shows only 50% of youth receive sex education that meets national goals. There also remains little emphasis on providing instruction on a comprehensive range of health topics, including the intersecting influences of sexual health, mental health, and identity. This highlights an important gap Real Talk fills to help adolescents access essential information and resources to support their holistic health and wellbeing. We are committed to providing high quality health content and will continue to be a trusted resource for adolescents and youth-serving organizations everywhere.
Read the Executive Summary here and visit our website to download the full report.
In this together,
Cristina & the Real Talk team
P.S. There are lots of ways to support our work further – whether through financial support or partnering with us to bring Real Talk to teens in your community. Email us with any inquiries at founders@realtalkapp.com