Healthy hints

Jill Anderson works on various projects and programs in the Reno area to educate people about reproductive health topics as an employee of Planned Parenthood.

What do you do here?

I'm a community health educator and the lead Teen Success facilitator.

What does that entail?

The community health education part means that I provide community health education, usually sexual health education. As part of that, we have a weekly program where we go up to Job Corps and provide their students with general sexual health education—healthy relationships, anatomy, kind of like the basics. I've also been involved in several other community health programs throughout the four years that I worked here, including Street Smart programs, and most of these programs are aimed at youth. We also have a program called Someone Else's Shoes that I do, which is a program to help provide—basically, the focus of that program is on teen pregnancy prevention. And so it's a program that we provide to different venues. We've done it for high schools, middle schools, college-age level, and it talks about teen pregnancy and its impact on the community and what we can do to best support teen moms to be successful, and also what we can do to help prevent unwanted and unplanned teen pregnancy. And then on the Teen Success facilitation side of it, the Teen Success group is a support group for pregnant and parenting teen moms, and the two main goals of that group are to help teen moms maintain their family size until after they graduate high school and also complete their high school education. That's a really successful program. We're really proud of that. In the general population, teen moms have a repeat pregnancy 20 percent of the time in Nevada, and girls who are members of Teen Success, only 1 to 2 percent have a repeat pregnancy. So that's really successful. And as far as high school graduation rate, the high school graduation rate for teen moms in the general population is 50 percent and of girls who are involved in the Teen Success program, there's a 98 percent graduation rate from high school or getting their GED. … We do sometimes offer one-on-one kind of like mini lessons … for people who are interested in that—it's usually for youth or children—but primarily, we do kind of like group programs. … They kind of vary a little bit. Some are like ongoing multisession groups with an education focus. Some of the programs that we do, like my colleague does a lot of programming with UNR and TMCC, so he'll go in and he'll do one-off kind of sessions of general sexual education, topics around sexuality, how to talk to your kids about sex, that kind of a thing. That's also what Someone Else's Shoes program is, it's a one-off program. And then the Teen Success program is an ongoing support group, so members come weekly to that group. Those are kind of the basics. Sometimes we also do other one-off sessions because community agencies will contact us and say, “Hey, we want someone to come and talk to social workers and psychologists and mental health professionals about how a person's sexuality and sexual health can affect their mental health.” That's a program that we're putting together for NNAMHS (Northern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services) over on Galletti.

What are some of the things you talk about in a typical education program or session?

It kind of varies depending on the program. For the Teen Success program we focus on goal setting, parenting skills and child development, healthy relationships, decision-making, sexual health and that kind of thing. And then the ¡Cuidate! program is aimed at a younger crowd and talks a lot about anatomy, puberty, birth control, including abstinence and STIs. Those are usually the main focus of our education programs—anatomy and sexual health, birth control, including abstinence and STIs. We also have a parents talk program where we talk to parents about how to talk to their kids about sex and sexual health at different ages. We totally have a wide range of topics. Sometimes we do a condom demonstration and condom negotiation—when to talk about condoms, how to bring it up, reasons to use condoms, why it’s important, that kind of thing. At the Teen Success group, we also do a cooking class so we talk about nutrition and general health, too.

What's your favorite part of your job here?

Oh gosh. That’s a pretty tough question. I really like a lot of the programs that we do here. I think probably my favorite part is the Teen Success program. It’s one that I’ve been involved in pretty intimately and like heavily since I started working here. I just really enjoy the opportunity to get to work with young moms. It’s very motivating. It’s really inspiring just to be able to give them a safe space to come and have a nonjudgmental experience and being with other teen moms and getting to work with adult mentors, it’s pretty amazing. We do like a cooking class once a quarter, and we also have a scholarship opportunity for girls in that program. So we have a scholarship luncheon once a year, and that’s also like a really amazing opportunity for them. This year the girls did an amazing job. We had seven recipients of the scholarship and so that was a great time just at that luncheon.

What would be some of your advice for the general population about reproductive health?

October is “Let’s Talk” month, so like talking to your kids about sexual health and kind of being able to start doing that. Studies have found that parents have a really big influence on how kids relate to sex and sexuality and their own experience with it. And so kids who have parents who are able and willing to talk to them and give them medically accurate information that’s age appropriate in kind of an environment that’s open and nonjudgmental, so that kids get to kind of generally get to explore, “Hey, this is what I’m hearing on the playground. Is that true?” I think that that’s some excellent advice that it’s especially important for parents to talk to their kids. One thing that I’ve found in doing sexual health education is that kids really are curious about sex and sexuality and sexual health. They have a lot of questions when given the opportunity, and it’s stuff that they really do want to know and are interested in. So being able to provide them with medically accurate information is so important because they can go out and make informed choices.

Do you deal with other kinds of reproductive health as well?

Like other kinds of preventative health care? Yes. Planned Parenthood does offer that. Not mammograms, but breast exams. Also cervical cancer screening, annual well woman exams, so like pelvic exams. We do the HPV vaccine, which is a big thing, the Human Papilloma Virus. We offer that vaccine, which is a huge benefit to young people. It’s available to men and girls aged 11 to 26. It’s a series of three shots, and when all three shots are administered it’s a really great protective factor for those people because HPV is pretty prolific. And if people are sexually active, it’s a really great protective measure. It’s not 100 percent to protect against HPV, but it’s a really good thing that people can do to help protect themselves. And, obviously, Planned Parenthood offers like birth control and also STI, sexually transmitted infection, testing and treatment.

For those parts of reproductive health, what would be some of your advice?

I think just like knowing that the services are available is really an important part of keeping the community as a whole healthier and safer and also knowing that it’s available in a judgment-free environment. So if someone were to come in and say they haven’t had a pap smear in five years or something, I think there can sometimes be some shame associated with that or like, “Oh no, I haven’t done this.” So Planned Parenthood is a good place to come to where you’re not going to get that kind of reaction. We just want you to come in and be healthy. We want the services to be as affordable as possible and available to anybody who wants them.