President Joe Biden’s administration has dedicated funding to a sex ed programme targeting trans boys. (Getty Images)
President Joe Biden’s administration is dedicating nearly $700,000 to a sexual health programme aimed at trans boys.
The Department of Health and Human Services has approved a grant to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research in California, with funding totalling $698,736 that began in September 2023 and will continue until June 2027.
The grant outlines that trans boys “at risk for negative sexual health outcomes” but they are “effectively excluded” from sexual health information provided, because “gender-diverse youth do not experience the cisgender, heteronormative teen sexual education messaging available to them as salient or applicable”.
The grant summary goes on to state that research suggests trans boys are less likely to use condoms when engaging in sexual activity that involves a penis “and are at least as likely as cisgender girls to be pregnant”.
It notes that sexual health programmes vary greatly across the US, especially in rural areas compared with urban areas.
The programme states it will work with Girl2Girl, originally designed for cisgender teenage girls who are sexual minorities, and adapt it for trans boys.
Information on the US’s youth.gov website states Girl2Girl is a pregnancy prevention program delivered via text messaging with content that focuses on teen pregnancy prevention, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing, communication skills, and healthy and unhealthy relationships.
It will also hold focus groups to learn more about the sex lives of trans boys and gather data on their condom use, birth control strategies, HIV testing and PrEP uptake.