Wanderlust

Hi-Tops

April 17, 2007 at 8:31 pm gvblog Leave a comment

Today I met with Elizabeth Casparian, Elizabeth Walters, Corrine O’Hara, and Connie Poor from HiTops, an amazing organization that promotes adolescent health and well-being in New Jersey.  I’m still in Princeton staying at my aunt and uncles, so I rode into town with my uncle to test out my gear. It’s a good thing I did because as I was riding down Nassau Street one of my front panniers, which I got for free years ago at Pedal Revolution in SF,  started flapping around and got caught in my wheel. I had just spent an ungodly amount of time tightening the cable that holds the pannier onto the rack, and apparently the elastic in the cable had pretty much had it.

HiTops was my first interview, so I was excited and nervous since I wasn’t quite sure how it would go. As it turned out, the women I spoke with were incredibly inspiring and had interesting stories. Read about it after the jump!

HiTops was founded 18 years ago because the founders saw a need in the community for a teen only space. I’ll let you read about their programs on their website, but there are a couple of things that really stand out about their structure and programming. They are, as far as they (and I) know, the only organization in the country that is a free-standing adolescent health care provider that also runs sexuality education programs. They are also the only organization I know of where the educators are all clinicians- Corrine and Connie are both registered nurses,and Elizabeth Walters, who has been at HiTops since it was founded, is a midwife.

One of the things I’m most interested in working on is integrating the provision of reproductive health care and sexuality education, because it seems to me that it makes so much sense. It was gratifying to talk to people who have DONE that, and find out that they feel like they’ve been extremely successful. There isn’t really good data on how many youth they’ve empowered to make their own decisions about sexuality and reproduction (would that we could figure out a way to keep such data!) but from anecdotal evidence and talking to my cousins who grew up here, HiTops was a vital organization for Princeton teenagers.

I didn’t realize how progressive New Jersey is when it comes to access to reproductive health care and sex ed.  New Jersey doesn’t take federal funding for sex ed and has a state mandate that sex ed has to be comprehensive.  There aren’t any parental involvement laws for abortion, and teens have access to confidential reproductive health care services.

I asked them how they felt the cultural definition and approach to sexuality has changed in the last 20 years, and the answer was expected but depressing regardless. Elizabeth commented that she though the country had gotten much more conservative in recent years. HiTops peer health educators – high school students – were invited to appear on a Peter Jennings special about AIDS in 1992. As part of their appearance, they demonstrated how to use a condom by putting one on a banana.  On national television. I wonder what would happen if they tried to do that today?

I was particularly impressed by the HiTops peer health education program. The curriculum reminds me a lot of the FemSex curriculum, and the women I met with talked a lot about how the Teen Council experience really empowered the youth to be advocates – not just reproductive/ sexual health advocates, but social justice advocates. I wish I’d gotten a chance to talk to someone in the teen council, but maybe next time!!

Now I’m off to figure out how to fix my pannier, what I can cram into my bags, and what I should just leave behind.   

Entry filed under: On the Road. Tags: .