Students Today Aren’t Ready for Sex (STARS) program

About the STARS Program

What is STARS?

The STARS program trains high school teen leaders to help their younger peers in middle school learn how to say no to sexual involvement at an early age.

The five-part education series aims to provide middle school students with tools to resist social and peer pressure to become sexually involved before they are ready. Its message is simple and clear: It is better to wait to become sexually involved.

Purpose of the STARS Program

Young people today are reaching reproductive maturity at younger ages. As a result, many are faced with making choices about sexual behavior that they are not equipped to make.

It is difficult for adolescents to project how their actions today could lead to life-long consequences. Young people need to learn to handle social pressure and peer pressure in order to manage their own sexual behavior. The STARS program is designed to address both social and peer pressure.

The curriculum focuses on:

1. The risks of early sexual involvement.
2. How the media influence choices about sexual involvement.
3. Different types of relationships and why peer pressure is the most difficult type of pressure to handle.
4. Learning assertiveness skills as a tool to resist social and peer pressure to have sex.

History of STARS in Oregon

STARS was developed by Multnomah County Health Department. It is based on the Postponing Sexual Involvement Education Series developed by Marion Howard, Ph.D,. and Marie E. Mitchell, R.N., in 1983 for the Emory/Grady Teen Parent Program at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.

The STARS program began as a demonstration project involving six Portland, Oregon, public middle schools between February and June 1995.  Four schools received the curriculum with the remaining two serving as control groups.  The initial results showed positive findings for the four outcome measures of knowledge, perception, attitude and intended behavior regarding early sexual involvement for students who participated in the curriculum. For 1995-96 school year, the Multnomah County Health Department was funded to offer the program to all 17 Portland and Parkrose middle schools. STARS is now a statewide program offered to each school district that would like to participate.