How did the teen pregnancy prevention program start in rural South Carolina?
Dr. Janice Key: We decided to a needs assessment of our County and see where there was an unmet need in the County. So a medical student and I plotted the teen birth rates, it needs that code of our county and also visited each program that was involved in teen pregnancy prevention that was operating in our county and mapped where those services were available. And what we found surprised us, we our program was located in Downtown Charles, and as were all the other programs, but the highest teen birth rate was out in the rural part of the county were there was no service available.
Out of that we've created a plan that had a several levels of intervention. The first was to serve the teen mothers themselves, because teen mothers are very likely to drop out of school to have trouble being a good mother and to have another baby while still teenager. So we had a special intensive intervention for teen mothers that's called the second chance club.
Then we've also had an intensive intervention for the second highest gross group of girls, which is the younger sister or daughters of teen mothers, and we brought medical care out to the community, so the university brings medical care that's me I come out and see patients one day a week out here in this rural area that's 20 miles away from Downtown. So that we with the parents' permission and with the cooperation of a local federally qualified health center provide comprehensive adolescence services for the kids at the school.
Then we also provide an education for parents and for kids about sexuality, but also just about parenting of teenagers. So the intervention involved intensive services for the highest risk kids and also school and community eduction and medical care three pronged approach.
How board based are your education programs?
Dr. Janice Key: Well we do have a lot of education about what is a healthy relationship. There are education is not just about STDs and birth control its also about what constitutes a healthy relationship helping both girls and boys recognize when is a relationship healthy or unhealthy striving towards having a healthy relationship and we believe in skills based education not just didactic education that serves this particular community. For example, one of the types of education we provide is a specific skills based workshop for African American young woman is very culturally based and includes building that self esteem so that she can insist on a healthy relationship with her partner.
What success have you had since the inception of the STOPP program?
Dr. Janice Key: Our program is involved during this six years we change as the new changes every year, but we've been really thrill that every year the team in this high school and in the community have decreased so we three years ago there were 12 births in this high school two years ago they were six, last year there were only three. So we are really delighted that results and that's not just the whole picture the other part of the picture is how many of our graduates are doing well in high school graduating from high school, how many college physicals I did last spring as our students go of to college that another part of the success of the program.
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