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.
No comments:
Post a Comment