Center’s Peer Program Teaches Teenagers About Sexual Issues

Veronica Islas was a ninth-grader at Palisades Charter High School when she took part in a program designed to train teenagers to teach their peers about reproductive health. She quickly gained some important knowledge.

“I was 14 and had my first official boyfriend,” Islas said. “I learned how to say, ‘No!’ ”

The nine-session peer educator training, a service of the Westside Family Health Center in Santa Monica, proved so inspiring that, after graduation, Islas took a part-time job with the program.

Now 22, Islas juggles 16 hours of work per week for the center’s Teen Outreach Project with classes at Cal State Long Beach. Prompted by her work with young people, she plans to become a nurse.

The Teen Outreach Project received $14,000 this year from the Los Angeles Times Holiday Campaign, which raises money for nonprofit agencies in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

In addition to peer educator training, the project offers school presentations, a teen clinic and information to teenagers at popular venues such as the Third Street Promenade and the Venice boardwalk.

“Research would support that peers learn from peers,” said Julie Kirk, director of community outreach and education for the Westside Family Health Center. “I can see the peers interact. It’s a great thing to witness.”

Founded by a group of Santa Monica women in the 1970s, the center -- which until two years ago was called the Westside Women’s Health Center -- served as a haven for women in need of reproductive health services. Its clinic, housed in a cramped space on Ocean Park Boulevard in Santa Monica, now offers a range of services to families from throughout the Southland. They include lactation counseling, childbirth classes, mammograms and teen prenatal classes.

One goal of the Teen Outreach Project is to reduce the number of teenage parents. The peer educators counsel their young subjects to abstain from sex or to use condoms, to cut down on both unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. The peer educators also instruct young people about drug and alcohol abuse and self-esteem.

“A lot of kids don’t really think about it,” said Vinicius “Vinny” Cosac, 21, a peer educator. Cosac said he feels rewarded when he returns to his alma mater, Santa Monica High School, to educate students about sex and sees them “changing from not being conscious to thinking about [their] decisions.”

After years of treating sex in a matter-of-fact, adult way, Islas finds that she is now armed with ample information to debunk her friends’ misconceptions.

“Through this program,” she said, “my confidence as a person has grown.”

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