User:Maeve Hickey/sandbox

Special education
The Dominican Republic provides specialized education programs for children with special needs or physical disabilities to accommodate these needs. The Dominican Association of Rehabilitation is one of the larger, government-funded special education institutions. It has not only a school for special education, but programs for speech therapy, physical therapy, workshops, evaluation of disabilities, medical diagnostics and rehabilitation, and more. While these services are provided, reports have found that 70% of children with a disability were currently not in school.

Sex education
Authorities in the Dominican Republic planned to instill a comprehensive sex education program in schools' curriculum, but it was not approved by the National Education Board. Sex education is considered taboo in the Dominican Republic; many Dominican families don't allow contraceptives in the home because it is against the Roman Catholic church, which is the largely dominant religion there. A study on sex education in developing countries noted that when developing resources for sex education, the context of the country and the local areas, such as literacy rates and school attendance, needs to be taken into consideration to ensure the effectiveness of the program. From a study looking at sexual health of men in the Dominican Republic, 14% of males surveyed were found to have HIV antibodies. Female sex workers are also at an increased risk of STI infections. Kerrigan identifies that there is a need for the development of educational resources regarding sex education in order to decrease the prevalence of STIs. In a separate study in the Dominican Republic, those who received sex education were 1.72 times more likely to report having high HIV/AIDS knowledge. Additionally, those who received sex education were also 2.52 times more likely to use condoms during sex.