Awards
- Presidents Circle Laurel Pin - 2024
- Benefactor
- Titled Professor - 2018
- Provost Professor
- President's Award for Distinguished Teaching - 1991
About William L. Yarber
William L. Yarber is Provost Professor in the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington and senior scientist at The Kinsey Institute. He is also senior director of the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention and affiliated faculty member in the Department of Gender Studies.
Dr. Yarber, who has four degrees including his doctorate from Indiana University, has authored and co-authored over 160 scientific reports on sexual risk behavior and AIDS/STD prevention in professional journals and has received nearly $4 million in federal grants (National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U. S. Dept of Agriculture) to support his research and HIV/STI prevention efforts. He is a member of the international Kinsey Institute Condom Use Research Team who has for two decades investigated male condom use errors and problems and developed behavioral interventions designed to improve correct and consistent condom use.
At the request of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Yarber authored the country's first secondary school AIDS prevention education curriculum, AIDS: What Young Adults Should Know (1989, 1987). He is co-editor and founder of the Handbook of Sexuality-Related Measures, Fourth Edition (2019). Dr. Yarber is the lead author of Human Sexuality: Diversity in Contemporary Society (McGraw-Hill, 2019, 10th edition) which is used in over 300 colleges and universities throughout the United States. The text was published in 2012 by the Beijing World Publishing Company as the most up-to-date text on human sexuality published in China in the past half-century. The book is considered to be in the top ten sexuality books, along with a texts by Freud and Kinsey, as a "must read" book for all Chinese people. In 2012 the book was published in Korea and in 2018 in Taiwan.
Dr. Yarber chaired the National Guidelines Task Force, which developed the Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Kindergarten - 12th Grade (1991, 1996, 2004) that was published by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) and adapted in six countries worldwide. Dr. Yarber is past president of The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) and a past chair of the SIECUS board of directors. His awards include the SSSS Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award; the Professional Standard of Excellence Award from the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists; the Indiana University President's Award for Distinguished Teaching; and the inaugural Graduate and Professional Student Association Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award at Indiana University.
Dr. Yarber has been a consultant to the World Health Organization Global Program on AIDS as well as sexuality-related organizations in Brazil, China, Jamaica, Poland, Portugal, and Taiwan. He regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in human sexuality. He was previously a faculty member at the University of Minnesota and Purdue University, as well as a public high school health science and biology teacher. Dr. Yarber endowed, for perpetuity, at Indiana University the world's first professorship in sexual health, the William L. Yarber Professorship in Sexual Health and the annual Ryan White & William L. Yarber Lecture.