Evaluation of Texas Opt-in Policy for Sex Education and Abuse Prevention

Speaker bios:

Dr. Melissa Peskin is an epidemiologist and behavioral scientist with over 20 years of experience conducting research focused on the determinants of adolescent health risk behaviors related to sexual risk-taking and violence, including bullying, aggression, and dating violence. She also has extensive experience designing, implementing, and evaluating health promotion programs for youth. She has been PI or co-PI on several large randomized controlled trials to develop, evaluate and disseminate these programs. Examples of programs include “It’s Your Game… Keep it Real”, an effective adolescent sexual health program, “It’s Your Game-Tech”, the Internet version of It’s Your Game, and “Me and You: Building Healthy Relationships”, an effective healthy relationships and dating violence prevention program for middle school students. She was also PI of a study to develop an online decision support system to help school districts adopt and implement evidence-based sexual health programs.

Jen Biundo is the Senior Director of Policy and Research for Healthy Futures of Texas, where she works to support access to sexual health information and services for Texas youth. She earned her master’s degree in Public Affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and holds a Certification in Public Health. She previously served as an analyst on the Texas Legislative Budget Board, working on public health and public education. She's the proud mom of two school-aged boys, including a high schooler who kind of wishes his mom had a normal job that didn't involve sex education.

Watch webinar here.

View slides here.