"Take Control: NYC Takes on Reproductive Health"

In “Take Control: NYC Takes on Reproductive Health,” which airs on public access TV during February 2009, Deborah Kaplan, PA, MPH, outlines the impressive array of creative strategies for transforming the lives of NYC’s at-risk adolescents which she has spearheaded in both the public and private sectors during her eight years with the City health department’s Bureau of Maternal, Infant and Reproductive Health.

In recognition of continuing reports that nearly 50% of American teens become sexually active while they are still in high school, Deborah Kaplan has worked within both the public and private sectors in New York City to

• promote sexual, reproductive, maternal, perinatal and infant health;
• to reduce disparities in access to care; and
• to educate and empower New Yorkers to make informed, responsible and healthy choices in their sexual and reproductive lives.

Key Activities of the Bureau:

• Healthy Teens Initiative, which involves customized training and technical assistance to community-based and school-based health centers with emphasis on:
  • Protecting teens’ confidentiality and consent rights
  • Training frontline staff
  • Reducing financial barriers
  • Dispensing contraceptives and assisting with the purchase of contraceptives
  • Monitoring and evaluation

  See further: the Healthy Teens Initiative “Seven Steps to Comprehensive Sexual and Reproductive Health Care to New York City Adolescents"

  Participating providers

• Community Educational Services including
  • Safe Sleep Peer Education — training for organizations which seek to teach parents how to reduce the risk of SIDS and prevent unintentional injuries.
  • Breastfeeding Initiative — encouraging breastfeeding by educating mothers, providers and the public; seeking support for breastfeeding mothers in the workplace; and helping to establish hospital practices to assist women who breastfeed.
    
    
• Family Planning Initiative -- to help NYC adolescents obtain comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care, including contraception and Emergency Contraception Education and Outreach.
  
  
• Extensive Provider and Community Collaborations — such as
  • the Cribs for Kids, a safe-sleep education and crib distribution program.
  • Teens and parents can also call 311 about free or low-cost confidential adolescent sexual and reproductive health services available at Department of Health clinics and other locations, or for information on the Healthy Teens Initiative.
    
    
• Nurse-Family Partnership — part of a nationwide, nurse home-visiting program committed to improving the health, well-being and self-sufficiency of low income, first-time mothers and their children.
  

• Comprehensive Sex Education

  Our mass media bombards our teens with a very 'mixed message' concerning acceptable sexual activity. We need to arm them with the facts concerning sexuality through comprehensive sex education programs in the schools and other community resources. 'Abstinence-only education' is not effective and not believable within the context of their daily lives, where they are inevitably exposed to a relentless flood of mixed messages concerning sexuality.

• Service Learning

Related to President Obama's push to service, Debbie suggests that by connecting teens to community service, as in after-school programs, they gain a feeling of self-worth which enables them to resist pressures to engage in irresponsible sexual activities.

• Access to teen-friendly health services

Experience has shown that young people will seek health care that is easily accessible and where they will be treated with dignity. Teens can go online where to find low-cost or free teen-friendly medical providers be they at school-based clinics, community health centers or private providers. ALL of the listed clinics offer free and confidential sexual health services for teens, including birth control, condoms, emergency contraception (morning-after pill/Plan B), HIV testing, Pap smears and gynecology services, pregnancy testing, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and treatment.

 

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More about health challenges for teens and strategies for dealing with them:

• Only 8% of sexually active teens use birth control pills |MORE
  
  
• Breast milk is the gold standard for infant nutrition and the only necessary food for the first 6 months of an infant’s life. |MORE about "the strategic approach taken by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and its partners to change hospital practices and educate health care providers and the public on the benefits of breast milk."
  
  
• Involvement of teens in after-school service projects is seen to have positive impact on academic performance and pregnancy rates among participants. |MORE about Teen Outreach Program
  
  
• “Unintended pregnancies can be prevented,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Through education and outreach we can... reduce the number of abortions and improve the lives of thousands of New York’s women." |MORE
  
  
• Why do so many evangelical teen-agers become pregnant?

Social liberals in the country’s “blue states” tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter’s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in “red states” generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn’t choose to have an abortion.

|MORE in "RED SEX, BLUE SEX" New Yorker, November 3, 2008

• The Nurse-Family Partnership in New York City was the subject of a previous Future Choices program.

 

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Brief Bio of Deborah Kaplan

Deborah Kaplan is the Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Maternal, Infant and Reproductive Health at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), where she has worked since 2001. The Bureau’s work and commitment to assuring universal access to confidential, quality reproductive health care for all New Yorkers is exemplified by its’ vision statement:

“We envision a world where all people live healthy, fulfilling sexual and reproductive lives and where all children are wanted, born healthy, nurtured and loved.”

|MORE

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