Building self-esteem yields substantial results in reducing the rates of unwanted teen pregnancy, school dropout and academic failure -- primary goals of the Teen Outreach Program (TOP).
To address the high rate of pregnancy and sexually transmissible infections among Southern California's adolescents, Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties decided to involve teens in an effort to reach their peers.
"Reducing the Risk" (RTR) is a 17-lesson curriculum developed by Richard Barth, MSW, PhD, with the help of staff from ETR Associates in Santa Cruz, California, a nonprofit health education organization founded in 1981. In use since the early 1990's, RTR is specifically designed to delay the onset of sexual intercourse and to increase knowledge about pregnancy risk, contraceptive use, and protection against sexually transmissible infections.
Launched in 1993, the Plain Talk initiative is aimed at helping communities develop and implement locally acceptable plans to protect sexually active youth from unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmissible infections.
Girls Inc. is a national youth organization dedicated to helping girls achieve their full potential as human beings. Since 1981, Girls Inc. has been on record as supporting age-appropriate sexuality education and, in the late 1980s, developed a series of programs on Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy for young women aged 9-18.
The VCC Teen Clinic maintains the philosophy that teens tend to better understand and place more value on information about sexuality issues if it is presented to them by their peers. Designed with the help of a Teen Advisory Committee, the clinic is run by teen staff under professional supervision. The staff are graduates of the VCC's AIDS Education and Prevention Peer Health Educator Project with forty hours of training that covers birth control and pregnancy, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmissible infections, skills for dealing with peer pressure, and effective communication.