County Will Provide Schools With AIDS Information Booklet

The Orange County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to make available to school officials a booklet aimed at teen-agers, parents and teachers that explains AIDS and how the disease is spread.

The board directed the county Health Care Agency to make copies of the booklet available to all 28 junior high and high school district superintendents in Orange County.

The pamphlet, entitled “Teens and AIDS,” was developed by the AIDS Response Program of Orange County, an educational project of the Garden Grove-based Gay and Lesbian Community Center. The booklet was produced at a cost of $5,000, half provided by the state Department of Health Services and half by the county’s health agency.

Written by Nurse

A draft of the booklet, written by a registered nurse, urges parents to talk with their children about sex, noting that in 1985 one-third of the country’s teen-agers and 15% of adults polled did not know that AIDS had been transmitted through heterosexual intercourse to some wives and girlfriends by intravenous drug users infected with the fatal disease.

Homosexual men and intravenous drug users have been the main victims of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

The pamphlet explains that AIDS is not spread by sharing a locker, shaking hands, using swimming pools, eating in cafeterias or restaurants, or using toilet seats or door knobs.

It says that the disease can be sexually transmitted and that sexual contact with individuals of unknown sexual or drug-use history increases the risk of acquiring the disease.

The booklet, which is scheduled to be ready for distribution next week, also says that a laboratory study “showed condoms formed a barrier” to the virus that causes the disease.

The supervisors approved providing the booklet to school superintendents without discussion, but Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder said in a statement that 150 people in Orange County have died of the disease, which only came to light in the early 1980s.

“Informing the public on the dangers of this dreaded disease is of vital importance,” Wieder said. “We should work with educators throughout the county to distribute the pamphlet. In this leadership role, we would be taking an important first step toward establishing a countywide AIDS education program aimed at teen-agers.”

Wieder said that teen-agers “are unaware of the dangers involved and need to understand clearly how this fatal disease is spread.”

At Wieder’s suggestion, the supervisors also directed the Health Care Agency to form a committee of representatives from the county’s junior and senior high schools and HCA officials to study AIDS education needs and ways to meet them.

Jerome R. Thornsley, superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District, said the school board next week will review several videos and film strips on AIDS to see if they are suitable for use in classes starting with the eighth grade.

“We are concerned about AIDS,” Thornsley said. “It is a life-and-death matter. . . . (The board has) already made the decision we have to do something. It’s just a question of what materials are appropriate at what grade levels.”

Thornsley called Tuesday’s action by the supervisors “timely” and said he would look forward to studying the pamphlet and having the school board decide if it should be distributed.

Use of words such as condom , which has been barred in advertisements by some magazines, is not a problem in his district, Thornsley said.

“One of the things we realize in the matter of AIDS--as the (U.S.) surgeon general and the state superintendent of education have said--is that there is no easy way to discuss it without being pretty down to earth and pretty frank about it.”

Schools already address sexual questions such as virginity and sexually transmitted diseases, Thornsley said.

Because AIDS is life threatening, it has become a more serious problem than other sexually transmitted diseases. “We wish AIDS wasn’t here as a problem, but it is. And it isn’t going away, and you can’t waltz around the bush and talk about it in nebulous terms,” Thornsley said.