Kids Helping Kids to Avoid Pregnancy : Teen counselors prove to be a key resource for Valley Community Clinic’s education program

In April of 1994, we wrote an editorial bemoaning the dearth of accurate information among teen-agers on matters ranging from AIDS to avoiding early pregnancies. At the time, we were applauding one program that was managing to part those veils of adolescent ignorance: the Valley Community Clinic in North Hollywood and its valuable teen-age counselors.

Those young staffers had been carefully educated to counsel and impart useful and perhaps even life-saving facts to their peers. The main topics involved risky sexual behavior and its many consequences. At the time, for example, there were those teen-agers who said that they were not at risk because they believed that only homosexuals could contract AIDS or the virus believed to cause it.

Well, the teen counseling program is still going strong, as evidenced by its recent appearance at the Amelia Earhart Continuation School in North Hollywood. One of those available to impart facts was teen mom Arlin Donis, 16, who said “A lot of teens think that it is easy to get government support if it (pregnancy) happens to them. What no one understands is that it is really hard to have a baby in the ‘90s.”

And the approach appears to be working. Before the teen counselor project began, about 30% of the teen-agers visiting the clinic were pregnant. Now, three years into the program and with triple the number of clinic visits, the teen pregnancy rate has dropped to 6%.

The clinic’s approach has gained attention from as far away as Washington, D.C. “What I’m discovering here is an entire untapped resource in dealing with what is considered a national crisis. Kids really can help kids,” said Dr. Felicia Stewart, U.S. deputy assistant secretary for population affairs. Stewart recently traveled here to inspect the program, and she was exactly right in acknowledging its good works.