Alternative Ways to Educate Youths About AIDS
By CHERYL P. WEINSTOCK
Published: September 15, 1991
THOUGH adolescents may be difficult to educate and government budgets limit HIV programs, some people have nevertheless found ways to educate teen-agers. The instructors try to reach young people from pulpits, community health centers and classrooms, as well as through innovative outreach programs.
"We got off easy when AIDS struck gay men," said Dr. Deborah Cotton, an assistant professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School. "They came to us to be tested. But adolescents are not going to seek us out until they really need us."
So people like the Rev. Meredith Jeffers of the Middle Island United Church of Christ reach out instead to adolescents. "Because," she said, "in a moment of passion or fear, kids forget everything they ever learned, I feel I can't tell them often enough about the risk of HIV infection."
Although the church is a haven for parishioners to discuss fears and worries, every year she conducts an AIDS education Sunday in which she invites health professionals and people with AIDS to speak to her congregants about AIDS.
Ms. Jeffers said she encouraged congregants in junior and senior high school to participate because "you can never hear the facts too often."
"I want the kids to know that the church is one of the places where it's O.K. to discuss sex and, knowing some of my kids may be becoming sexually active, I want them safe. And the church is in a position to include some of the moral-ethical dimensions of sexuality that can't be included in the school's approach."
The Rev. A. Charles McElroy Sr. of the Friendship Baptist Church in Riverhead said: "We're not going to close our eyes to the fact that HIV is a problem for our adolescents. We're a community-based institution, and our kids are an important part of our community. My message is one of abstinence as a first rule to them, because we don't deviate from what our church holds. But rather than build strong bridges around principles, we also attempt to deal with a problem at hand, like HIV, and work it through." Interdisciplinary Approach
The School Superintendent in Roosevelt, Dr. Rodgers M. Lewis, said that although he was mandated to develop an AIDS curriculum, he had tried to approach teaching about the disease with a broad approach.
"We're not just going to talk about AIDS in a single class," he said. "We ask teachers to use an interdisciplinary approach and to incorporate AIDS into their curriculum wherever it's appropriate.
"The whole intent in our curriculum is to expose children to the threat of AIDS at an early age and to spiral that approach, so that we present them with more and more difficult material as they get older. We believe that we have a high-risk population that we serve in our community, and this is the only way to stem the tide of infection."
Although adolescents can learn from their parents and teachers, they relate best to their peers, experts say. With money from a state grant, the Nassau Health Department has subcontracted with the Red Cross to hire and train adolescents to disseminate information about HIV to their peers who may be at risk. Working With Many Groups
At a recent workshop, three peer counselors presented strategies to reduce risks at the Children's House in Mineola. The institution's programs including preparing foster children for independent living.
One counselor Christopher Devlin, 17, of Mineola, explained how to use condoms and answered questions. He said he had a "good feeling" to know that he was helping others. "I remember one time when this girl had this terrible misconception that you could get AIDS by sitting on a contaminated toilet seat or touching a contaminated doorknob," he recalled.
Another counselor, Cassandra Codes, 15, of Uniondale, said: "We teen-agers think that we're never going to die. We can. If we're going to get involved in sex, then we have to take precautions."