Plain Talk In the News

'Plain Talk' aims to lower teen pregnancy

The Herald-Sun (NC)
January 29, 2006

By Whitney Isenhower

PITTSBORO -- Hitting them at home could be a way to get safe sex on the minds of teenagers and their parents.

One Chatham County program, Plain Talk, is implementing a community-based approach in hopes of lowering climbing pregnancy rates and sexually transmitted infections in Latino teenagers.

Plain Talk, or Hablando Claro in Spanish, is a nationwide program that trains those already within a community on how to educate families and youths in the area about sexual health issues.

"It was a way to get into the Hispanic community because of the culture being so different," said Kay Phillips, executive director of the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Coalition of North Carolina, which helped start Plain Talk in the state.

Phillips said Chatham County's program had trained 14 community volunteers in about five sessions. She said participants are trained in sexual health facts, as well as how to access the communities and get teens and parents communicating about the issues.

"The best way to work with the Hispanic population is among the parents and building that trust," Phillips said.

But some wonder if teenagers and parents can ever openly talk about sex together.

"We always want to create a safe place for teenagers and sometimes you don't feel safe when you're around your parents talking about those issues," said Nadeen Bir, a youth organizer with El Centro Hispano, a nonprofit center for Hispanics in Durham.

Plain Talk began in 1993 as a $5 million, four-year project in five urban neighborhoods throughout the United States.

The program came to North Carolina when the Annie E. Casey Foundation looked to poverty-stricken areas in the South as places that needed sexual health education, said Geri Summerville, vice president for Public/Private Ventures, a national nonprofit organization that works with Plain Talk.

Summerville said Plain Talk focused on urban, minority communities because there was less willingness to let other sources in and listen to what they have to say

"When we do it in those communities, there's more distrust from the outside environment," Summerville said.

The Casey foundation provides the communities with about $35,000 per site. Summerville said communities probably needed about $80,000 total to jump-start the program.

"Our hope is that the state will be able to provide more money," she said.

The Chatham County program was funded additionally by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, and received the state's funding in October 2005, Phillips said.

Plain Talk comes at a time when great disparities among pregnancy rates and spreading sexually transmitted diseases exists between white and minority populations in the state.

A report from the N.C. State Center for Health Statistics showed that between 1999 and 2003, the rate of minority pregnancies for girls ages 15-17 was nearly double that of the same demographic in white teenage girls.

The HIV/STD Prevention and Care Branch of North Carolina also found that new HIV infections in 2003 were significantly greater in minorities. The rate of Hispanic infections was more than two and a half greater than the rate for whites. The infection rate for blacks was eight times greater than that for whites.

But those with Plain Talk think the program could be a step towards lowering these rates, especially if it can reach to other parts of the state.

"We're hoping that other counties will be onboard," Phillips said. "We're hoping this will spread and we can keep it going."