Teens Alert Peers to the Perils of HIV

Even when Iris Waldron’s uncle couldn’t visit, he always called. So when the phone rang last Thanksgiving, Iris knew it was him.

But this time was different. Something was wrong. Her uncle told Iris and her family that he had AIDS.

“I kept waiting to wake up and realize that it couldn’t happen to him,” Iris said. Two months later, her uncle died.

So when Iris, now 17, heard about a new HIV prevention program for teens in Ventura County, she knew she had to participate. This summer, she and six other local high school students spent 10 hours training to be part of Peer Education Program of Ventura County.

They learned about HIV and AIDS, talked with an HIV-positive patient and practiced talking to teens about prevention. Now they are making presentations to other youths at youth clubs, churches and group homes.

During the one-hour talks, the teens break down myths and misconceptions about acquired immune deficiency syndrome by telling their fellow students how HIV is transmitted and how it can be avoided.

“I thought this would be a way to educate people about the disease,” Iris said. “If I could open one person’s eyes, then hopefully that person and [that person’s] family wouldn’t have to go through what we did.”

The project is being modeled after Peer Education Program of Los Angeles, which has been working for nine years to reduce the spread of HIV among teens and to raise the level of compassion for people with HIV. Wendy Arnold, president of PEP LA, said the goal is for teens to share what they know with their classmates, friends and family, and ideally cut down on the number of new infections.

Before the local peer educators made their first presentation last week, Arnold told them, “Remember, you’re not going to reach all of the kids all of the time. But if you reach even one or two kids, then congratulations: You’re saving lives.”

Several school districts in Ventura County also get the message out through teens. The county superintendent of schools office has coordinated its peer education program for four years and has trained 220 students.

California public schools are required to teach students about HIV prevention only once in middle school and once in high school, and some educators say peer workers help reinforce what the students learn in the classroom.

John Elfers, who coordinates HIV education for county schools, said the biggest impact of such programs is on the peer educators.

“They become the advocates, the champions, the torchbearers,” he said. “They really are transformed by the experience.”

Erin Kandel, 22, started volunteering as a peer educator with PEP LA when she was 14. Kandel said the program raised her self-esteem and improved her public-speaking skills while igniting a passion to educate teens about HIV and AIDS.

Now Kandel is project director of PEP Ventura and a graduate student in public health at UCLA. She plans to continue working on HIV prevention after earning a master’s degree.

“It’s become my life’s work,” she said. “Ever since I was 14 years old, my life’s path kind of made itself, and I feel really fortunate.”

She said the peer educators she trained this summer have developed tremendous compassion and have the tools to teach people how to avoid the virus.

Callie Diggerstaff, 17, a senior at La Reina in Thousand Oaks, has been a volunteer a couple of months and said PEP Ventura has already affected her.

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“At first, I just thought it would be fun, and I am always looking for volunteer opportunities,” she said. “Now I am really into it and I am passionate about it. I see how easily AIDS can be prevented, and it’s frustrating that people don’t take precautions.”

At PEP Ventura’s first presentation this week at the Boys & Girls Club of Oxnard, the teen volunteers talked to a group of students ages 7 to 11. Iris asked them if they could still be friends with somebody with AIDS. When they nodded, she asked, “What sort of things could you still do with that person?”

“You could still talk to them,” one said. “You could still hug them,” another said.

After the talk, Kandel asked the kids what they learned. In exchange, they got a piece of candy. Codi Pace, a fourth-grader at Hueneme Elementary School, said he now knows that AIDS is transmitted through open wounds. “And I learned that it is hard to get, and that everybody should learn how to take care of themselves.”

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For more information about Peer Education Program of Ventura, call project director Erin Kandel at (800) 971-9534.