Media Center: Press Release

Doctors applaud new program offering free workshops on adolescent reproductive health to organizations across the United States

New York, NY—Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health (PRCH) today announced that it launched a nationwide educational initiative aimed at teaching physicians more about adolescent reproductive health. The Adolescent Reproductive Health Education Project (ARHEP) curriculum offers comprehensive information about adolescent reproductive healthcare. With access to ARHEP’s comprehensive training, healthcare providers, advocates, policy makers, and parents can help young people make the best decisions about their reproductive health.

Dr. Angela Diaz, an adolescent medicine specialist who worked with PRCH to develop the ARHEP curriculum, explains that this program can help improve access to healthcare for teens: "As a population, adolescents have the least access to healthcare and are the least insured. While many healthcare providers want to serve teens, they may need guidance and additional skills in order to provide adolescent-friendly services. The ARHEP curriculum will compliment the training that doctors receive in medical school and residency programs, and will help them provide the care that adolescent patients need."

The cutting-edge ARHEP curriculum grew out of a need among physicians for more information about treating adolescent patients, especially when dealing with sensitive issues like sexuality and reproductive health. After PRCH released a summary of minors' rights to confidential healthcare in Georgia, providers began contacting PRCH to request more information and training sessions on working with adolescents. In 2002, a pilot program was launched in Georgia to teach doctors, educators, parents, and teens more about adolescent reproductive health. The pilot program was enormously successful, and has reached more than 2,000 participants since its inception.

As the Georgia program grew, organizations around the U.S. began to request ARHEP presentations and materials. As a result, PRCH worked with adolescent medicine specialists throughout the nation to develop the new national ARHEP curriculum. Several hundred copies of the new curriculum are being distributed to directors of pediatric and adolescent medicine programs across the country, and the program will also be promoted to obstetrician/gynecologist, family medicine, and internal medicine programs.

The ARHEP curriculum is available on a CD-ROM, which includes slideshow presentations, handouts and bibliographies on adolescent sexual health. Among the most innovative portions of the CD-ROM are six standardized patient videos, which allow ARHEP participants to view and comment on realistic scenarios of physician-patient interaction. The curriculum is available free of charge from PRCH. The curriculum includes modules on ten of the most important subjects related to adolescent sexual and reproductive health:

Adolescent-Friendly Health Services
Adolescent Reproductive Health Data
The Physician as Advocate for Adolescent Reproductive Health
Cultural Competency and Adolescent Health
Essentials of Contraception
Male Adolescent Reproductive Health
Minors' Legal Access to Confidential Reproductive Health Services
Pregnancy Options Counseling with Adolescents
STI Epidemiology and Treatment Strategies
Sexuality Education

Project partners for the ARHEP curriculum are Advocates for Youth, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project, Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, Center for Adolescent Health and the Law, Guttmacher Institute, Jane Fonda Center at Emory University, Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center, NARAL Pro-Choice New York Teen Outreach Reproductive Challenge, The New York Academy of Science, Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, and Society for Adolescent Medicine.

More information about ARHEP is available here.

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