Adapting the Sex Education by Theatre (SExT) Health Promotion Model for Culturally-Safe, Trauma-Informed Remote Virtual Delivery with Indigenous Northern Youth

Indigenous youth in remote communities in Northern Canada experience disproportionately high rates of STBBIs compared with other regions and creative interventions are desperately needed to curb this trend. SExT: Sex Education by Theatre is a theatre-based, culturally relevant, peer education participatory action research project that I developed as my doctoral thesis. Since 2018, in partnership with the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research (CANFAR), SExT has toured nationally to regions most affected by HIV/AIDS and STBBI outbreaks, reaching over 6400 students across Ontario, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories (NWT). In response to COVID-19, SExT partnered with Connected North, a cutting-edge program by Cisco and TakingITGlobal that provides an accessible digital platform through high definition, two-way TelePresence video technology. This study will engage Indigenous youth in Northern communities in a trauma-informed, culturally-safe, and virtual adaptation of the SExT intervention. Virtual workshops will involve interactive performances and theatre exercises led by SExT peer educators. Realist evaluation will unpack the mechanisms of how participatory remote online delivery of SExT works in particular contexts. Pre-post surveys with students and educators will assess self-reported changes in knowledge, attitudes, and intended behaviours. t-tests and ANOVA will determine pre-post changes, differences between virtual and live conditions (live data previously collected), and demographic differences. Focus groups will be held with students and data analyzed through an iterative process using thematic analysis. Findings will be used to improve the intervention model and scale-up. SExT's ongoing national touring activities and COVID-19 related pivot to the digital space provide an unprecedented possibility to explore the opportunities and challenges associated with virtual delivery of arts-based sexual health promotion in remote Indigenous contexts.