This past Wednesday, July10, SUN President, Tracy Zambory, spoke to the Saskatoon media and public about the importance of comprehensive sex-education for our youth at the 2019 Council of the Federation meetings of Canada’s premieres.

Zambory's statement: 

"I am a registered Nurse and President of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses. I stand here today on behalf of Saskatchewan’s more than 10,000 Registered Nurses, Registered Psychiatric Nurses and Nurse Practitioners.

As nurses, we know that as our youth grow up, they face many important decisions about relationships, sexuality, and sexual behaviour.

The decisions they make can have lasting impacts on their health for the rest of their lives.

Our youth deserve to have all of the information they need to make healthy decisions to protect themselves and those around them so that they can live healthy, productive lives.

Sex-education must ensure young people have all the tools and skills necessary to be able to take personal responsibility for their overall health and well-being while helping them navigate the unique challenges and pressures of today’s modern, digital and social media era.

We need to ensure our youth are receiving honest, age-appropriate information about sex, sexuality and sexual orientation, gender identity, sexual assault, healthy body image, cyber-bullying, sexting, online predators and any other forms of sexual abuse.

From an individual and public health perspective, we as nurses know that a comprehensive sex-education program will have lasting and material impacts on both the physical and mental health of our youth today and as they grow up.

Comprehensive sex-education can help young people:

  • Avoid negative health consequences ranging from sexually transmitted infections to unplanned pregnancies – Saskatchewan has the highest rates of HIV infections in the country and some of the highest rates of unplanned pregnancies and STI infections.
  • Sex-education teaches young people to value their own bodies and respect the rights of others – teaching them about sexual violence, their right to say no and positive body image.
  • It also teaches young people to show dignity and respect for all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity – this goes a long way to combatting bullying, discrimination and harassment and has a big impact of the mental health of our LGTBQ+ youth while helping to build a more tolerant society.

Registered nurses view sex-education as a key part of a solid primary health prevention strategy that will protect the health and well-being of youth today and in later life, while also reducing and hopefully even negating future health care and social service costs related to STI infections, unplanned pregnancies and mental health issues linked to bullying, harassment and sexual violence.

As the largest group of frontline health care providers, we are calling for a comprehensive sex-education program that will meet the physical and mental health needs of our youth today and into the future.