Educational Theatre: Keeping Secrets

“Do you know the proper way to use a condom? Here let me show you,” said Monica to Eddie in a sexy comehither voice and playful manner. Marvin Gaye’s sultry song “Let’s get it on” plays in the background. Eddie leans back anticipating a sexy time. “Let’s practice on this,” Monica pulls out a banana and dashes the promise of promiscuity. Eddie groans.

Welcome to a scene from “Secrets,” part of Kaiser Permanente’s Educational Theatre Programs. A different kind of theatre that provides health information to inspire teens and adults to make healthier choices relating to: abstinence; HIV/AIDS/STI transmission; resistance to peer pressure; and the risks of being sexually active.

After each hour-long performance, these four professional actors, who are trained as peer health educators, lead a question and answer session with the audience. This powerful way of teaching has lead to greater communication building between teens, their parents and adults in their lives. Secrets was created in conjunction with physicians, teachers, licensed counselors, and parents.

Plan With Your Heart: It's About The Kids

“Most of you came to this job because you care about kids,” said Alex Vila, the morning’s keynote speaker. “When you refine your vision go back to that one kid and make it very visually centered, drive the planning for your vision around that one kid.” Alex gave an uplifting talk using real-life examples of both program success stories and also how she grew into her role as a youth mentor.

She shared the story of Mario, a youth in the prison system. “I talked to him for 45 minutes about changing,” said the Colombian-born and raised Vila. At the end of the conversation he said to her, “Do not ask me to change, unless you can show me who to become.” The result of this epiphany led her to offer programs based around youth, their vision, and their goals. “It’s not about you but about the youth.”

Later, she used the exercise “How to fold a towel?” as a metaphor for program implementation. She brought up three people to demonstrate the right way to fold a towel. Of course, there is no right way. She then asked the volunteers to fold the towel into the bag, which fit just right. Later, she asked them to fold the same towel into a very small box. Of course only 15-20 percent of the towel fit. Her main point is to remain flexible with the program’s grant and implementation and to focus on the parts that impact youth. “Get out of your cubicle—check the temperature in your schools, walk your district,” said Alex, “get out and listen to young people.”

LGBTQ Insight: Keeping Our Youth Safe

The morning’s hot topic, “That’s So Gay! Combating Homophobia to Reduce LGBTQ Health Disparities” began with an interactive exercise: Know your gay celebrities! Luminaries include: Ricky Martin, Ellen de Generes, Lily Tomlin, Clay Aiken, Jody Foster, and the purple Teletubbie character “Tinky-Winky.”

Co-presenters Ilsa Bertolini and Kevin Gogin showed the groundbreaking LGBTQ website dedicated to “creating a safe place for all students.” Kevin told the story of the public reaction to the site’s presence, some negative and positive—and ways they mitigated the issues. They showed sobering statistics: higher incidence of alcohol and marijuana use; elevated mental health indicators for depression and suicide; and an increase of threats at school. Facilitators shared a powerful film addressing bullying with participants called "Let's Get Real."

Looking for Answers: Behavior, Student Population and Program Intervention

Dr. Carol Goodenow, Director of Coordinated School Health, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, opened up the second day as the morning’s keynote presenter: ”Identifying and Addressing Physical Activity and Nutrition Disparities—Dietary Patterns and Latino Youth.” Her goal: identify adolescent populations most at risk of poor nutrition and obesity; and use multiple strategies to help schools address those issues.


Dr. Goodenow said the achievement gap between Hispanic students and white/Anglo students is larger in Massachusetts than in the country as a whole. She asked the NPD partners to pair up with someone from another site and exchange answers regarding behavior, student population and program intervention. Answers included: Baltimore—African Americans are at risk for pregnancy, SDTs, and poor nutrition; Arkansas—has a unique population from the Marshall Islands (near Australia) with myriad health programs including TB; Wisconsin has a strategic plan including a community partnership with the United Way; and Los Angeles has a grant with the USDA for nutrition in the schools.

Marketing Your Program: Delivering the Message

“In these lean times you should be marketing to keep your job,” said Bill Baynes, co-presenter of “How to Promote, Get Support, and Market Your Programs” one of the afternoon’s breakout sessions. “Remember,” said Bill “one message does not fit all. Think of who you’re trying to reach. You don’t talk to kids the way you talk to school board members.” He held up advertisements for various cigarette print media and said there is a message/reward component in place. Kool: getting the girl for young men; Virigina Slims: strength and power for women; Marlboro: rugged independence for men. He suggested that the NPD partners embrace the same type of mindset—know your target audience and deliver the message.

Ira Sachnoff, co-presenter discussed Media 101: how marketing works including personalizing, targeting and rewarding. He said to get personal, put on a human face. In Media 102 the topics included: staying visible, identifying different kinds of media, and types of activities. The new media subject was discussed in greater detail. Both Ira and Bill showed the NPD partners progressive websites, blogs, cell phone texting trees, Facebook, Twitter and You Tube examples. Bill said “the most important part of marketing is to consistently implement all the way through—from start to finish. Don’t wait until the end of the project to begin marketing.”

Alaska: Alternative Schools Healthy Students Initiative

The Alaska Department of Education & Early Development (EED) launched the Alternative Schools Healthy Students Initiative in the fall of 2008. This five-year initiative was created with the goal of reducing the student risk behaviors associated with disease, premature death, social challenges, and poor academic outcomes. It includes all Alaskan Alternative Schools (defined as serving high-risk students). The need for this initiative was identified by a review of National and State data which indicate that students in Alternative School settings are disproportionately affected by heightened levels of risk behaviors. Comparisons of risk behavior reported by students in Alternative Schools to students in Traditional Schools provide compelling evidence that targeting support to Alternative Schools is an efficient, focused, and strategic way to infuse extra support to Alaska’s most at-risk students.

The Alaska Alternative Schools Healthy Students Initiative is funded through a variety of federal funding sources such as the CDC Cooperative Agreement; Title IVA: Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act; Special Education; and the Department of Health and Human Services. This initiative provides support for the prevention of high-risk behaviors that contribute to HIV, STDs and Unintended Teen Pregnancies, including prevention of violence, alcohol, tobacco, and drug use as well as the support of programs and services to enhance positive behaviors. Statewide partners support identified sites, providing professional development, curricular resources, implementation mini-grants, support for writing additional grants, and data identification and collection.

In the area of Sexual Behavior, 2009 data indicate Alaska Alternative Students are much more likely to:

• Have ever had intercourse (82.2% vs. 43.5%)
• Have had sex before age 13 (11.5% vs. 5.1%)
• Have had sex with multiple partners (42.9% vs. 11.4%)
• Have had sex recently (65.5% vs. 30.4%)
• Have had alcohol/drugs before sex (27.7% vs. 17.1%)
• Not use a condom (54% vs. 37.8%)

2009 Alternative Schools YRBS data will provide the baseline data for our efforts with this population. A specific example of one program effort to address some of the Sexual Risk Behaviors would be our work with the Alternative Schools to address some of the barriers students were facing. We identified that it was reported that students were not using condoms because they could not access them in their rural communities. We worked with our health and social service and agency partners to provide free condoms that are now readily available in the identified Alternative settings.

• Contact Person - Terri Campbell
• Email Address - Terri.Campbell@alaska.gov
• Website Address - http://www.eed.state.ak.us/

Arkansas: Child Wellness Intervention Project

The Child Wellness Intervention Project “CWIP” is a project to address childhood obesity in Arkansas by strengthening health education and implementing quality physical education programs in the schools. The project is a collaboration between the AR Office of Coordinated School Health, the AR Tobacco Settlement Commission, AR Children’s Hospital and AR Center for Health Improvement.

The CWIP grant was funded with Tobacco Settlement dollars and 56 schools were awarded between $7,000 and $14,000. The funds were used to provide the schools with SPARK curriculum, equipment, Fitnessgram, HealthTeacher.com and all teacher trainings.

A comprehensive evaluation will be conducted by the AR Center for Health Improvement which we hope will show over time an improvement in attendance, behavior, academics and fitness levels of the students in these schools.

• Contact Person: Kathleen Courtney
• Email Address: Kathleen.Courtney@Arkansas.gov
• Website Address http://www.arkansascsh.org/