Category: CAPP and PREP

In this guest post, Abby Terry, an educator with Mothers and Babies in Binghamton, shares a hot tip!

When presenting our middle school life skills and using a “Jeopardy” style review game, a student suggested we use Kahoot! instead.  We investigated and found that by changing the question format to multiple choice, it would work well and be engaging for all students.  Students were already familiar with the game from other classes and are instantly excited when they hear there will be a Kahoot! 

The level of student excitement and engagement prompted us to put the Myth and Fact activity from Be Proud, Be Responsible into Kahoot! as well.   Immediately, we could see the benefits of every student responding with less time to be influenced by their peers.  We had real-time feedback of what the majority of students understood, or what we would need to clarify.  We are also able to gather trend data from the Kahoot! website by downloading reports.  One hiccup was that we were only able to do this for schools that provide an iPad or tablet for each student.   

We knew that we had to make this available to all students both for the student’s increased excitement and our data collection.  Kahoot! works through an app or the website. We had experience with students using the app, but the app is not available in the Google Play Store, which works with our Kindle Fires.  We didn’t want to allow students open internet access, so we set out to find a work-around.  After some research (involving APK mirrors, etc), we were able to load the Kahoot! app onto all of our Kindle Fires and now we use it at every school for Be Proud, Be Responsible and Making Proud Choices.  It’s even more exciting for the students who don’t have tablet access every day and our results have been fantastic.  For more information about using Kahoot! with evidence-based programs or with Kindle Fires, e-mail aterry@mothersandbabies.org

~ Abby Terry,
Mothers and Babies

The word is out…Sara is leaving us this week and headed to an amazing new job with Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

For 11 years, Sara has done incredible work as a researcher and with the ACT for Youth Evaluation Team and beloved mentor for the ACT Youth Network.   Through her skill and humor, Sara has been able to connect with providers by helping them navigate the world of evaluation, tablets, surveys and everyone’s favorite…ORS.  In addition to her own family, Sara has been an integral part of our family here at Cornell.  Her dedication to the work, her commitment to reproductive justice and her endearing personality make her one-of-a-kind.

Sara, your work with Cornell, in general, and the ACT Team, specifically, has been invaluable.  Planned Parenthood’s gain is our loss, but we are beyond excited for as you embark on this new endeavor.  We will miss you tremendously!

~ the ACT for Youth team

Last year we held a series of meetings for supervisors to explore their responsibilities and tasks. We discussed challenges and best practices, and many of you shared your own experiences, challenges, and effective strategies. We covered a range of topics such as new educator orientation and professional development, team management, handling personality conflicts, community outreach, and recruiting new sites.

New supervisors have joined the ranks of CAPP and PREP since then. We would like to start up a new series of online learning collaborative meetings for supervisors in April. Following last year’s model we’ll start with an overview of effective supervisory strategies for CAPP and PREP. Next we will identify issues supervisors are interested in, and based on those interests we will offer monthly meetings via Zoom, providing best practice strategies and an opportunity for supervisors to learn from each other.

Learning Collaboratives work best if we have a diverse group of people involved, from supervisors new on the job to very experienced and seasoned supervisors.

Please join us for the first Supervisor Learning Collaborative Meeting on April 22 at 1:00PM. Stay tuned! Registration and additional information will follow soon.

~ Jutta

In a few short weeks, NYSDOH will welcome CAPP and PREP providers to Albany for our Bureau-wide two-day provider meeting. It is a great opportunity to hear about emerging public health topics related to priority areas of healthy interpersonal relationships, healthy birth outcomes, and improved pregnancy intention. You will hear from several excellent keynote speakers and attend relevant workshops that can enhance the great work that you do. At the conference, you will connect and exchange ideas with CAPP/PREP providers, other BWIAH provider groups, as well as your DOH program staff and your ACT for Youth team members.

Who should attend?

Attendance is limited to two participants per program. For CAPP and PREP, both Health Educator Supervisors and Health Educators are eligible to participate. We expect that at least one Health Educator Supervisor from each CAPP and PREP program will join us. Many of the workshops are specifically designed for staff that work directly with their program participants.

What does it cost?

The cost is $116 per attendee. Your registration fee will cover continental breakfast and lunch on May 22-23 and an evening reception on May 22.

**Note that no outside food will be allowed at this meeting and there will be presentations during lunch each day.

You are responsible for event registration, hotel, and travel expenses, all of which should have been included in your CAPP or PREP budget.

How do we register?

Register on the event website. For planning purposes, we’ll ask you to select the workshops you wish to attend. You’ll find descriptions of the workshops as well as keynote presentations on the site.

Room blocks have been secured at several Albany hotels. We recommend that you reserve your rooms and register for the event soon as each hotel has an early deadline for the discounted rate.

More information is available on the registration link; if you have any questions about the conference please contact your NYSDOH program liaison or me. We look forward to seeing you at this exciting event!

~ Eric Zasada
NYS Department of Health

As you know, we at ACT for Youth love to evaluate things and collect data. We are very interested in finding out what you are doing and how you are doing it.

Now we want to flip these questions and ask: How are we doing? Are we helpful? How can we be more helpful? Some of you may remember that a few years ago in first round of CAPP we asked you questions like that to evaluate our center and services. This time we have a slightly different plan.

Trainings first!

We have changed our training feedback form, as you may have noticed. We are asking a few different questions, mostly trying to gauge how well training content and resources can be applied to your work. Thank you all for filling out these open-ended questions.

Over the next few months we will contact participants of our core trainings–Training of Educators, Facilitation Fundamentals, Supervisor Training, Teaching Anatomy and Reproduction, and PYD 101–and conduct a brief interview to see if the trainings have been effective in enhancing your capacity to deliver evidence-based programs and meet other CAPP and PREP objectives.

Technical Assistance next!

Next year we will focus on assessing our TA approach. We are still developing ideas and approaches on how to do that. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.

In the meantime, we hope you will provide us with BRUTALLY HONEST and constructive feedback.

 

– Jutta

I’m delighted to announce that Marisol De Leon is joining the ACT for Youth Training and Technical Assistance team! A talented trainer with deep knowledge, Marisol comes to us with an extensive portfolio in the fields of positive youth development and adolescent sexual health. From designing an HIV prevention curriculum at the Hetrick-Martin Institute way back in 2004, to educating 10,000 NYC middle and high school students about reproductive health during her years at the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center, to serving as the CAPP Coordinator, among other roles, at DREAM (formerly Harlem RBI) – Marisol has done it all. She is also bilingual in English and Spanish. Total number of students educated over her career so far? Upwards of 18,000.

Marisol will be based in New York City with Michele Luc and Sara Birnel Henderson at Cornell University Cooperative Extension of NYC. She can be reached at: md696@cornell.edu

Please join me in welcoming Marisol!

 

– Jutta

In our experience of CAPP and PREP, staff turnover happens frequently. Educators may stay for a year or less and move on to other positions. We also see Health Educator Supervisors move on to other jobs, although this occurs less frequently.

This dilemma leads me to ask…

What strategies have you used to prevent educator turnover? Not all projects experience frequent staff turnover. Since increasing salaries is usually not an option, I am especially interested in finding out what practices  you have found to be effective in keeping educators engaged and motivated to stay on the job.

What strategies do you use to screen potential candidates? How do you find the best candidate for the job, a candidate with some staying power?

What do you do to prepare and onboard new educators and supervisors to the CAPP and PREP project? I think many projects would love to hear about your experiences and effective practices. Please share your ideas by commenting on this post.

Resource

Remember the CAPP and PREP Toolkits? Last year we put together toolkits for CAPP and PREP Supervisors with in order to create an institutional memory about the project, its purpose and goals, and key implementation strategies. Our hope was that it would help orient new staff to the project. Toolkit binders were distributed to each project at Provider Day—it may be somewhere in your office right now! We recently updated the CAPP and PREP Toolkits and made them available on the ACT website. Browse the list—you may find a new resource, or one you had forgotten.

 

– Jutta

We are excited to introduce our newest ACT for Youth staff member, Vanessa Amankwaa. Vanessa recently graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Development Sociology, Distinction in Research, having minored in both Global Health and Human Development. Her research honors thesis focused on disparities in drug sentencing between the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s and the current opioid epidemic. Vanessa has also spent time conducting research and health promotion in Tanzania, working with HIV positive women, among others. Originally from the Bronx, she is nevertheless prepared for Ithaca winters thanks to her years at Cornell!

Vanessa is a member of the evaluation team, and much of her effort will be concentrated there. She is also taking over some of Amy’s previous administrative responsibilities. (Never fear, Amy is still with ACT for Youth, but she has taken on some new responsibilities with another research project here at Cornell.) Vanessa will now be your point of contact for training registration, so you will be hearing from her now and then.  She can be reached at vka22@cornell.edu or 607-255-8790.

Please join me in welcoming Vanessa to the ACT team!

 

– Jane

Nika Norvila, CAPP Health Educator at Northwell Health, brings us this perspective. CAPP and PREP providers, please continue the conversation in the comments!

As CAPP and PREP providers we are bound to the evidence-based curricula we are assigned to facilitate. Whether it’s Making Proud Choices! or Be Proud! Be Responsible!, pleasure is not a subject that we delve into very deeply. I am not trying to advocate for the re-vamping of our EBPs or for educators to make any red-light adaptations, but rather for educators to consider the value of including pleasure in the conversations we have with our students, whether it is in one-on-one sessions, add-on sessions after EBP cycles, or–for the lucky few–workshops and group activities in our own spaces.

As health educators we are worried about unintended pregnancies, STDs, and HIV–which are all very important and valid for youth. However, when we think about why a lot of people have sex, including adults, the most common reason is for pleasure. People have sex because sex (hopefully to some degree, most of the time, for most people) feels good. To ignore this aspect of sex when teaching about sex seems unfair to the young people who are curious and well-deserving of truthful information about the ever present topic of sex and sexuality.

Some studies have shown that teaching youth about sexual pleasure and treating them like sexually autonomous beings allows them to feel like responsible sexual agents who need to take responsibility for adult things, like having sex.

In her book Girls & Sex (2016), through over seventy interviews with young women across the U.S., Peggy Orenstein explores the current of sex and sexuality. Orenstein writes, “If girls are unable to advocate for their own pleasure, they are also less likely to feel able to advocate for their own safety. Emphasizing male pleasure, especially without teaching about consent, perpetuates rape culture. Pain or uncomfortable sexual encounters are normalized for girls and women. In all kinds of ways, we expect women to be complacent in their discomfort.”

Teaching teens, but particularly teaching young women and girls, about pleasure–which historically has been intentionally dismissed and ignored–can not only led to better sex, but to safer sex, and to more empowered girls and women inside AND outside the bedroom.

Without re-vamping our EBPs, how can health educators incorporate pleasure into conversations and lessons with our students without taking away the intended messages of the EBPs? Would talking to students about pleasure detract from any of our safe sex messages, or simply make them stronger, if there is a link between pleasure, consent and safety? Can’t we hope that new messages of pleasure for women and girls will empower them? By learning about the clitoris and encouraging adolescents to explore their bodies, to learn what feels good, what doesn’t feel good, and where their boundaries are, leave them feeling empowered to only seek sexual encounters that feel good to them, instead of feeling only pressured to perform and please their male partners?

Please share your thoughts, questions and comments. You can also email me: nnorvila@northwell.edu

 – Nika Norvila, Northwell Health