Blog post by Dr. Christopher Worth, Co-PI of the My ROAD Project
Through the Lens of Sexual Health: Dignity, Power, and What Real Education Makes Possible
Several years ago, my wife and I led the grassroots and community facing work of a project with Washington University in St. Louis.
The project focused on sexual health education for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. As part of this work, we partnered with Dr. Susan Stiritz, who at the Brown School of social work was training a new generation of social workers to teach sex positive, adult sexuality education.
To understand why this project mattered so much, it is important to name a hard truth. For many people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, sexuality education has been limited or completely withheld. This includes education about their bodies, their boundaries, and their desires. Too often, this is done in the name of protection. People are bubble wrapped, kept away from information, and treated as if learning about their own bodies is dangerous. This kind of overprotection does not keep people safe. It leaves them unprepared.
My wife and I agreed to be part of this project because I have lived with the effects of fear based and overly protective approaches to sexuality education. Those approaches shaped my life in ways I am still working to heal from today. I learned firsthand that when people are bubble wrapped for safety, they are denied the tools they need to understand themselves and the world around them.
What this project taught me, clearly and deeply, is that dignity centered education keeps people safer than overprotection ever could. When we stop trying to control risk by holding back information, and instead trust people with knowledge about their bodies and their rights, we do not put them in danger. We prepare them. This project became a real life example of what happens when people with disabilities and people without disabilities truly learn together. We explored how to move through the world in ways that support both safety and joy. We honored people’s right to feel curiosity, desire, love, and passion.
Over and over, my wife and I watched community members and social work students grow side by side. That growth did not come from avoiding hard conversations or from wrapping people in protection. It came from treating people as capable adults and working through difficult topics together. One of the most powerful lessons I learned was this. When someone is treated like the adult they are, they feel it right away. That recognition alone can change how a person sees themselves.
We saw that change happen in real and meaningful ways. People who had long been protected from talking about their bodies learned the correct names for their body parts. For some, it was the first time they could clearly say what they wanted or did not want. Those conversations opened doors. They gave people space to imagine their future, their relationships, and the kind of life they wanted to live with greater confidence and clarity.
Over the seven year project, we watched people leave with skills that reached far beyond sexual health education. Community members learned how to tell their doctors what they needed. They learned how to set boundaries with partners. They learned how to say to their parents, I am an adult. I can make decisions for myself. This is the quiet power of real health education. It is not about bubble wrapping people from the world. It prepares them to move through it.
Today to further this work, I’ve done in the past, The goals of My ROAD to Health team are rooted in this non-bubble wrapping belief. This work is about creating and protecting spaces where people, especially those whose voices have long been controlled or limited, can speak for themselves in health settings. When people are supported to talk about sexual health, they gain power to speak up in every part of their lives.
When we stop confusing protection with restriction and instead offer dignity, knowledge, and choice, we do more than improve health outcomes. We affirm people’s right to live full adult lives.
