Chair in Improving Youth Sexual Health

STIs, unwanted pregnancies, and their social impacts are distributed unequally across the population, with young people bearing a disproportionate burden. While a strong body of work describes various risk-factors associated with sexual health inequalities, we lack an understanding of the mechanism by which social and structural forces act to affect the sexual health of youth at the population level. With STI rates among youth already high and rising (and with STIs and early maternal age becoming increasingly concentrated within marginalized sub-groups of youth), new interventions need to be developed that address the social determinants of youth sexual health and respect the autonomy of youth by adopting empowering research processes.