What's Happening

By Beverly Iniguez-Conrique | November 21, 2016

I was three and a half years old on my first day of school. On that crisp September morning, my mother woke up early to dress me and walk me over to the local elementary school.

This was a special moment for my mom. She never had the chance to attend college or immerse herself in her education. 

By John Henry Ledwith | November 17, 2016

I love school health advocates! Earlier this month I got to spend time with a whole bunch of them at the School Health Education and Services Section (SHES) of the APHA annual meetings. As usual, joining up with that crowd was an illuminating and inspiring process.

By Vignetta Charles, PhD | November 15, 2016

ETR is thrilled to see a new article, just released today. It is published by our close colleague, Dr. John Santelli, and his team at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. The Santelli team’s comprehensive work demonstrates that when we narrow income inequality and increase opportunities for education, we positively affect youth health and wellbeing. The study explicitly links increases in investment in education to declines in teen childbearing.

By Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, MCHES | November 10, 2016
Senior Editor, ETR

STD rates are up. The CDC noted in a recent press release that reported STDs are at an “unprecedented high” in the U.S.

This sort of news is undeniably discouraging for those of us working the sexual and reproductive health arena. After all, we’ve been feeling rather upbeat and hopeful about the impressive drop in unplanned teen pregnancies—rates are down more than half over the past 20 years. 

By ETR | November 4, 2016

Two heads are better than one! It’s an old but familiar adage. We have an updated version we’d like to suggest: two contraceptives are better than one.

ETR researchers have just published an article in The Journal of Primary Prevention that examines the frequency of dual contraceptive use among youth in alternative schools. Information about this population is particularly important because they are more likely than other youth to engage in risky sexual behaviors. To date, there has been no research examining dual use contraception in this group.

By Lanz Lowen, MS, MA and Blake Spears, MBA | November 2, 2016
Senior Consultant, The Mandana Group and Independent Healthcare Consultant

What are the relationships of young gay men like today? It can be surprisingly difficult to answer this question with confidence. Little research is being done on gay male couples—how they build and sustain their relationships, what they think about monogamy and marriage, what they believe about the attitudes of their peers.

This year, we completed our Choices study, which focused on gay men ages 18-40 and explored attitudes and practices about monogamy and marriage.

ETR | October 27, 2016
 

Summed up in a word? Awesome.

The annual meetings of the American Public Health Association are one of the nation’s premiere professional events. This year, more than 12,000 attendees will be showing up in Denver October 29-November 2. They’ll present research, work on policy recommendations, learn new skills and network with colleagues from across the nation and around the world.

By Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, MCHES | October 25, 2016

The tragedy of opioid addiction is not new. When I was a teen, my sisters and I lost two friends to heroin overdoses.

And I still remember the time one of my closest friends told me about the night she tried some drugs with her boyfriend, a heroin addict, and almost died. When she stopped breathing, he didn’t want to call for help because he was afraid he’d be arrested.

No, opioids and heroin are not new. But today’s epidemic is different, and it’s become much worse.

By Cody Sigel, MPH, CHES and Tracy Wright, MAED | October 20, 2016

Originally published here on Beth Kanter's blog.

The first time you facilitate a training, you start developing your own personal list of tips for great facilitation. You try out some things that work, and they go on your list (“I can’t wait to try that again!”). Chances are you also try out some things that don’t work, and they go somewhere else.

Some go into the trash (“I am never again going to ask people to take off their shoes as a way to break into small groups!”). And some go onto a wait-and-see list (“How come that worked so well when I watched Deb do it, and it was such a flop when I tried it?”).

By Jill Denner, PhD | October 17, 2016

Computer science for all? If you’ve been reading the headlines, you have seen the explosion of articles. Proponents argue we must offer computer science (CS) education to all students, in a combination of school and afterschool programs. At first glance, making CS available to all sounds like a great idea. But there have been concerns about what this looks like in practice.

By ETR | October 13, 2016

We hear regularly from customers about our health education materials. Sometimes they share praise and compliments for a product they’ve found helpful. Sometimes they ask for a new title or resource they need. And sometimes they offer constructive feedback about something that doesn’t quite work in their situation.

We’ve also gotten some really vitriolic criticism from vapers, who tend to dislike our public health messages about e-cigarettes.

By Jim Pickett | October 11, 2016
Director of Prevention Advocacy and Gay Men's Health, AIDS Foundation of Chicago

PrEP has altered the landscape in HIV prevention in extraordinary and profound ways. It’s changing the lives of vulnerable individuals. It’s also bringing about big changes for the HIV workforce—health care providers, prevention specialists, outreach workers, social workers, educators and more. In fact, I believe we’ve entered the most dynamic period in our fight against HIV since 1996, when the advent of highly active antiretroviral therapy revolutionized treatment and saved countless lives.

By Jennifer Salerno, DNP | October 6, 2016
Founder, Possibilities for Change

Whether you’re a parent or an individual who works with youth, you are placed in an influential role to help keep teens safe and healthy. But that’s no easy task!

Risky behaviors account for the majority of teen injury and premature death. In the face of these challenges, educators, providers and parents need concrete strategies to support teens in smart decision making.

By Eloy Ortiz, MURP | October 4, 2016

Our nation has a vital interest in building a better pipeline to careers in STEM. However, females, Blacks and Latinos are substantially underrepresented in tech professions. ETR has had a longstanding commitment to exploring ways to boost the presence of women and underrepresented minorities in the tech world. A number of our research projects explore strategies to support a more diverse presence in the field.

By Elidia Moctezuma | September 29, 2016
Research Assistant, ETR

I love research! That’s not something I knew, or even imagined, when I started my college career. Thanks to the guidance of some outstanding teachers and mentors, I’m now ready to make research the focus of my career.

By John Henry Ledwith |  September 27, 2016

What’s the true value of a comprehensive school health program? I have a surprisingly simple answer: it’s a matter of life.

This came home to me starkly the other day as I sat with a group of people who had been an integral part of my sons’ childhood and teen years. Here were some of their coaches, many of their friends, the parents of their friends. And my boys, too, now young men in their 20’s.

We had come to honor and remember a friend and former teammate who had taken his own life the previous week. We sat baffled and heartsick as we listened to this young man’s father, reaching out to the people in the room, appealing to us: “Please, do not focus on this one bad decision, this momentary impulse, of my son’s life. Do not let that define who he was and the memories you carry onward. He was so much more than this!”

By Pamela Jakwerth Drake, PhD, & Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, MCHES | September 22, 2016

First published on the EdSurge blog on July 20, 2016.

Students hold a lot of useful information that you can use to find out all kinds of things. Assess school climate or student engagement. Identify teaching strategies kids like best. Measure health behaviors and attitudes. Learn more about student interests. If you can gather this information, it can help you make better decisions about students.

Do you want to find out whether students feel their teachers are doing a good job of teaching? Whether students feel safe at school? Would you like to know students’ level of engagement and sense of belonging at the school? Do you want to gain a better understanding of student health risk behaviors so you can focus your health education programming in an efficient way?

A survey may be your answer. 

By Jill Glassman, PhD | September 20, 2016
Senior Research Associate, ETR

The field of teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) has experienced some impressive achievements over the past decades. By examining the evidence from evaluation studies, we’ve been able to identify programs showing effectiveness in reducing sexual risk taking among broadly defined populations of at-risk youth. ETR scientist Dr. Douglas Kirby was instrumental in developing and disseminating a list of effective characteristics for sexual health education programs, and in disseminating information about risk and protective factors that are key to our understanding of how these programs work.

The majority of these TPP programs originally were developed for high-school-age youth. More recently, however, there has been a shift to earlier pregnancy prevention efforts focusing on younger adolescents (10-14 year olds). Fewer of these youth are already engaging in the targeted sexual risk behaviors.