Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/63981
In a first-floor lecture hall of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Health Sciences Learning Center, class is underway. About 30 first-year medical students are scattered among several rows of seats. Their eyes are fixed on the front of the room, where six young guests stand. They are 17, 18 and 19 years old, and today they are the teachers. By the end of this October week, these teens will have woven a unique lesson plan into the coursework for more than 170 students at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. By the end of the year, they will have reached hundreds of others— current doctors, nurses and other health care providers—as well as groups of teens just like them through interactive work- shops statewide. We need to talk about it rather than ignore it, and there's nobody better to talk about it than the teens themselves. Amy Olejniczak cent Health Care Communication Program (WAHCCP), the sole Midwest effort of a national It's the work of the Wisconsin Adoles- a critical issue in adolescent health care today: the communication gap between providers and their teen patients. This goal was born out of a specific real- initiative aimed at addressing ity. Teens are sexually active, and despite school sex ed programs and parental "birds and the bees" talks, rates of sexually trans- mitted infections have climbed and teen pregnancy rates have remained stubbornly high. While doctors recommend that any individual, especially women, engaged in sexual activity seek regular medical care, many teens are either not talking to their doctors about these sensitive issues, their doctors aren't asking, or both. But teens themselves may be the answer to turning this trend around. Offering an expertise that even multiple degree-wielding doctors don't possess— what it's like to be a teen today—they are working to join a conversation that so often excludes them. One that they hope will be a catalyst toward a healthier future for teens statewide. 60 BRAVA Magazine March 2012 in 10 American teens have had sexual intercourse. In Wisconsin, sexual activity rates and risk reports vary depending on whom you ask, but according to the 2011 Wisconsin Youth Risk Behavior Survey, an anonymous and voluntary participation survey administered by the Department of Public Instruction, 42 percent of high school students said they have had sex. Meanwhile, despite seeing teen preg- By their 19th birthdays, a reported seven nancy rates in the United States dip to their lowest rate in 40 years, they remain among the highest in the developed world, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which reports on sexual and reproduc- tive health research, policy and public education worldwide. And although 15- to 24-year-olds represent only one-quarter of sexually active individuals, the Institute reports that they account for nearly half of the 18.9 million new cases of sexually transmitted infections each year. These are numbers that cause a public health advocate like Amy Olejniczak to pause. The Project Director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Women's Health (WAWH), a statewide organization advocating for comprehensive women's health care, Olejniczak has long been focused on Talk about health care today, and the con- versation often turns political. Discuss re- productive health care, and it most certainly does. Then add teen reproductive health care to the mix, and you've got a topic that pulls deeply held opinions to the surface. Whatever the political or moral view- point you speak from, the facts remain.