Welcome to Healthy Connections: A Sexual Health Education Curriculum by the Harborview Abuse & Trauma Center. Healthy Connections includes four new no-cost sexual health education lessons for high school students. Under WA State Senate Bill 5395, public high schools in Washington State must provide two units of comprehensive sexual health education beginning in the 2022-2023 school year. Healthy Connections was created to help Washington State high schools comply with this bill. As such, the Healthy Connections curriculum is meant to act as a “second dose” of sexual health education and builds upon lesson topics that students should have already received, such as affirmative consent and bystander intervention. Healthy Connections lessons are intended for 11th-graders, but are appropriate in 10th, 11th, or 12th-grade classrooms.
It is recommended that the Healthy Connections curriculum be facilitated in a specific order, however, each lesson may also stand alone. The lessons are as follows:
- Lesson 1: Setting & Respecting Boundaries
- Lesson 2: Healthy Relationships
- Lesson 3: Digital Consent
- Lesson 4: Supporting a Friend: Options After an Assault
The Healthy Connections curriculum was created by Harborview Abuse & Trauma Center (HATC) prevention staff, as well as student advisors from seven different high schools across three school districts in King County. A huge thank you to our student advisors: Ash, Remi, Ellen, Alphie, Lilly, Sam, Jessica, Hermela, Sienna, Samara, Ellyssa, Elena, Alex, TJ, Caroline, and Adilia.
HATC also received expertise and guidance from folks from several community organizations including, but not limited to:
- Neba Zaidi (New Beginnings)
- Hilary Bowker (New Beginnings)
- Laurie Dils (Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction)
- Nikki Van Wagner (Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction)
- Paris Chapman (Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence)
- Mo Lewis (National Sexual Violence Resource Center)
- Lisa Love (Seattle Public Schools)
In the creation of this curriculum, draft versions of each lesson were piloted in high school classrooms during the 2023-2024 school year to obtain student feedback. The students who received the lesson pilots completed anonymous surveys, which provided information that helped improve the lessons.
Thank you to the following schools for hosting pilot lessons:
- Foster High School (Tukwila School District)
- Mount Rainier High School (Highline School District)
- Nathan Hale High School (Seattle Public Schools)
This project was supported by Grant No. 2019-DJ-BX-0035, 2020-DJ-BX-0039, 15PBJA-21-GG-00291-JAGX, 15PBJA-22-GG-00610-JAGX awarded by Department of Justice. Points of view in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the Department of Justice. Grant funds are administered by the Office of Firearm Safety & Violence Prevention – Community Safety Unit, Washington State Department of Commerce.
