Little Engines That Could: Community College Students Become PreConception Health Peer Educators

As an extracurricular professional development activity, a group of six students from a large urban commuter community college were trained by the US Office of Minority Health (OMH)to plan and lead preconception peer education training programs on our campus. Our charge was to replicate the training program we had just completed, using OMH and our own resources. After that training, we, and the new trainees were to work together to plan and carry out a series of preconception health activities on campus. The goals of the OMH initiative are to use a peer education model to increase awareness of infant mortality in the world, the US, and New York City; reveal the disparity between African-American and Caucasian infant mortality rates and the reasons they exist; to mobilize students to want to change those statistics; and to reach out to African-American students on campus with a Healthy Pregnancy/Infant Mortality Prevention Education Campaign. This is the story of how a co-ed group of sophomores - relative strangers - who not only go to school, but also work, and raise families - learned to work together, planned and led a two day preconception health peer educator training program, and met or didn't meet certain program planning and implementation challenges. Finally, we will discuss the impact this experience has had on our own preconception health knowledge, attitudes and behaviors.