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The Need

Although DC youth have supportive policies and services for sexual health care, we continue to face many urgent health challenges. According to the latest Youth Behavioral Risk Survey (YRBS) data, more of our youth ever had sexual intercourse (54 percent compared to 47 percent nationally), are starting earlier (15 percent had sexual intercourse before age 15 compared to 6 percent nationally) and having sex with more partners (22 percent of DC youth had sex with more than four partners compared to 15 percent nationally). Even though youth report using condoms in high numbers, older teens and young adults continue to contract STIs in high numbers with the most significant increases to women between 15 and 24. Many youth don’t know about the school-based sexual health services available to them and the vast majority of DC public school students have not had any health education.

 

 

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    Health Need

    Our Program

    The Peer Health and Sexuality Education Project (PHASE) works to improve DC teens’ reproductive health and reduce unplanned pregnancy by expanding comprehensive sexuality education, ensuring access to community and school based reproductive health care, and engaging teen women and men as peer educators and decision makers. As PHASE’s largest program, the Youth Health Educator Program (YHEP) has trained and managed more than 300 youth educators who work in partnership with DC Public Schools and the Department of Health (DOH) to improve sexual health outcomes for DC youth through peer education, condom distribution, and by expanding sexual health education. Since October, YWP employed 207 youth who distribute 76,697 condoms (male, female, and flavored), conducted 21,356 educational interventions, and made 927 individual clinic referrals.

     

     

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      Health Program

      Policy Work

      YWP advocates for policies and programs that expand reproductive rights and access, improve health outcomes for youth, provide employment and leadership opportunities, and integrate youth into decision making. YWP’s health policy agenda is focused on laying the institutional groundwork to support full implementation of comprehensive sexual health education for DC youth through the public school system. Our strategy includes three steps: 1) Revising the DC Health Standards to include more comprehensive sexual health learning objectives and a broader and more detailed range of health education areas (May 2014 - May 2016; 2) The Implementation of comprehensive sexual health education in all grades; and 3) Expanding curricula quality and resources for high school teachers to include a broader diversity of tools and topics.

       

      Click here to read health testimonies. 

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        Health Policy

        Our Impact

        YWP’s Youth Health Educator Program is a high impact, low cost intervention that has reduced city-wide pregnancy and STIs among teens and contributed significantly to DOH’s youth health agenda and numbers and the Mayor’s agenda of youth employment and engagement.  Our dollar to impact ratio – at $1,285 per youth including wages -- exceeds and local or even national program of its kind.  Since October, YWP employed 207 youth who distribute 76,697 condoms (male, female, and flavored), conducted 21,356 educational interventions, and made 927 individual clinic referrals. Youth staff trained 150 health teachers, collected data from more than 500 youth on health, violence, education, and other issues, cultivated more than 200 relationships with administrators and teachers in DC public and charter schools, presented more than 40 testimonies to Council Committees in health and education, and provided youth outreach for school-based STI-HIV testing.

         

         

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          Health Impact

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