I used to live in Athens, GA where I was very active in the ONE Athens Teen Pregnancy Prevention Task Force. After I moved to Atlanta to work at G-CAPP, I stayed in contact with many of the dear friends and colleagues I made in Athens on the Task Force. One of these colleagues heard about trainings that the Office of Minority Health is doing on Pre-conception.

I jumped at the chance to help out because I really enjoy talking about sex!

The training was scheduled to be at Spelman College this weekend. I was at first a little apprehensive about the terminology “Pre-Conception.” What does that mean? It sounded to me like a Reactive solution rather than a Proactive solution. It also sounded a bit like they were encouraging young people to have babies -- YIKES!

I couldn’t have been more wrong. This is a program that works with college students to educate them to become peer educators in their communities. Once trained, they will work with young people (middle school through college age) who may not be planning to attend college and/or lack access to educational and reproductive resources. The trained peer educators educate young people on the following issues:

- Health disparities and minority health
- Infant mortality
- African American health status and its impact on infant mortality
- Preconception health, infant mortality and prematurity – What research says
- Preconception care
- HIV, STDs and preconception health
- Role of men in preconception health and fatherhood

I was asked to present on HIV & STIs. Because I feel so strongly about the importance of teaching skills in relationship negotiation, I negotiated (right!) to include skill building in the discussion. My presentation covered:

- Various types of STIs
- Which, when diagnosed, can be cured
- Which you must live with for the rest of your life
- How to protect yourself from these, and which STIs even condoms can’t always protect you from (HPV and Herpes are determined little suckers!)

Then we had a discussion on how to have these conversations with your partner, and role played the convos to build skills (Can’t learn it till you try it!). The best part of the presentation, in my opinion, was when we discussed how to make this work with middle and high school students. We talked using inclusive language, about being a role model that practices what we preach (Get tested! Use protection!) , and about increasing self esteem to reduce early onset of sexual behavior, which of course leads to the question of HOW DO WE DO THAT???

Y’all, I met some really amazing advocates and allies on Saturday. These folks are working on their campuses and truly care about the disparities happening in their, in OUR, communities. They are poised to make a big impact, and I cant wait to see how we all do this together!