Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #111111

Donna Johnigan, B.W. Cooper Resident Management Corporation, Resident Council, 3400 Earhart Blvd, New Orleans, LA 70125, 504-822-8840, tfleming@kingsleyhouse.org and Tammi Fleming, Kingsley House, Health Care for All - New Orleans, 1600 Constance Street, New Orleans, LA 70130.

Plain Talk, a community driven strategy, addresses adolescent pregnancy and STD prevention. This nontraditional approach to teen pregnancy and STD prevention among adolescents focuses its primary intervention on adults. One of the guiding principles of this program is that “Parents are the primary educators of their children”. The approach assumes, if parents and/or adults had basic knowledge on reproductive health issues (anatomy, physiology, STDs, birth control), communication skills, and what services are available or should be available for teens, they will have a major impact on teens when they are faced with making responsible decisions about engaging in sexual activity. The initiative has had many successful outcomes, one of which has been its community mobilization around the issues related to access to age appropriate quality reproductive health care for adolescents and community consensus building related to program planning and implementation. The successful mobilization of residents can happen only when residents are sufficiently informed to take a stand and community consensus is established around the particular issue addressed. In the Plain Talk process, community mapping is used as the basis for all program related activities. The duality of community mapping is in its primary objective of collecting information for program planning, and the sharing of information for community building.

Learning Objectives:

• Discribe different opportunities for resident input, which builds program awareness and community participation.
• Discuss levels of community participation and which level can lead to consensus building and mobilization strategies.

Keywords: Accountability, Community Building

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.