(Pictured are, left to right, Becca Smith Hill, PhD, MSW, Center for Transition Research and Leadership, University of South Carolina, Catherine Smith, Junior, CarolinaLIFE, University of South Carolina, and Chelsea VanHorn Stinnett, PhD, Think Colllege ICI UMass Boston. Photo by Jessie Romero Silver.)
We are excited to announce that Think College has been selected to participate in youthink, an incubator program that supports teams across the US and its territories in tackling a problem or gap impacting the health of young people in their community. Led by Chelsea VanHorn Stinnett from Think College, Becca Smith Hill from University of South Carolina, and Catherine Smith from CarolinaLIFE at University of South Carolina, the team will work with four other teams in their cohort over the course of eight months to engage in the design thinking process. Their goal is to conceptualize a solution that supports college students with intellectual disability to develop knowledge of comprehensive sexual health and their sexual rights and responsibilities as healthy and informed campus community members.
Design thinking is a collaborative process for developing solutions to real human problems, where teams seek to empathize and understand user experiences, challenge their assumptions about what they think they know, redefine the problem, and create innovative, human-centered solutions. Students with intellectual disability rarely receive any sexuality education in high school and what they do receive is likely not comprehensive. This means that when they come to campus, they probably lack knowledge and understanding of sexual norms and expectations. This could be problematic for many reasons, including the fact that students may not be aware of or understand their sexual rights and responsibilities under Title IX. (Want to learn more about what this means? Read this blog post by Chelsea.)
Having student representation on the leadership team will allow improved engagement with college students with intellectual disability to find out what they need to build their comprehensive sexuality and Title IX policy knowledge. The goal is for all students to come to campus with a basic understanding of these concepts and a plan for learning more about the concepts that will empower them to make informed and healthy decisions about their intimate relationships in college and in the future.
We will share updates as this work progresses!
This project is supported by youthink program at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. youthink is supported by a grant from the Office of Population Affairs of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $1,601,283 with 100 percent funded by OPA/OASH/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement by, OPA/OASH/HHS, or the U.S. Government. For more information, please visit https://opa.hhs.gov/.