ARHP, in partnership with the National Women’s Health Resource Center (NWHRC), is proud to sponsor Nurture Your Nature: Inspiring Women’s Sexual Wellness, an initiative on healthy female sexuality. The goals of this program are to increase the level of meaningful and effective communication about sexuality between women and their health care professionals, as well as between women and their partners.

You may request an ARHP speaker to present this medical education lecture at your event, including clinical conference or grand rounds session. To request a lecture, please click here to complete and submit the form.

For more information, please contact ARHP at education@arhp.org or (202) 466-3825.

Background

Sexuality has gradually “come out of the closet” in the United States, starting with our society’s questioning of traditional roles and institutions during the anti-establishment decade of the 1960s. Today, casual discussions about sex—and even professional conversations—are more socially acceptable and mainstream than ever before. Sex and sexuality are discussed on talk shows, promoted in advertisements, editorialized in newspapers, and have become a growing subject of study in the academic world.

Although talking about sex has become more common, education about healthy sexuality for women has not progressed. Male sexuality education has seen an insurgence since the launch of erectile dysfunction medications, yet the topic of female sexuality—particularly for mid-life and older women—has not.

Program Design and Educational Activities

The Nurture Your Nature program includes many carefully developed components to meet health care providers’ and patients’ needs for education. All program components have been established based on thorough needs assessment and research from the field, the expertise of the Expert Medical Advisory Committee, and interviews and guidance from patients. Program components include:

• The complete slide set for this program is available online for free at ARHP’s open-access tool, the Curricula Organizer for Reproductive Health Education (CORE)
• NurtureYourNature.org, an independent Web site for health care providers and patients exploring healthy sexuality and midlife women
• Issue of ARHP’s CME monograph, Clinical Proceedings
• What You Need to Know provider fact sheets
  • Female Sexual Response
  • Talking to Patients About Sexuality and Sexual Health
• From the National Women’s Health Resource Center
  • Fast Facts: Understanding Vaginal Pain and Vulvodynia
  • Live web chat with renowned sexology expert Dr. Sheryl Kingsberg (transcript can be read here)

Curriculum Learning Objectives

At the conclusion of these sessions, participants will be able to:

• Describe healthy female sexuality and two models of the female sexual response.
• Incorporate assessment of sexual function into the routine health care of women in midlife and beyond.
• Develop three communication skills to talk about sexuality with women in midlife and beyond.
• List four changes in female sexual function that occur with aging, menopause, and disease.
• Name three ways to provide appropriate treatment, counseling, or referral to patients experiencing problems with sexuality.

Intended Audience and Accreditation

The intended audiences for this program are physicians, nurse practitioners, nurse-midwives, physician assistants, pharmacists, and other health care providers in obstetrics/gynecology, and family medicine who treat menopausal women.

The curriculum/live sessions associated with this program are accredited for continuing medical education, nursing contact hours, and pharmacology credits.

Funding

The project has been made possible through an unrestricted educational grant from Procter & Gamble.