What's Happening

By Suzanne Schrag | October 24, 2014

I sometimes joke that I am a Luddite. The phone I use still flips open. I do not have a data plan. I inherited my husband’s old phone when he went over to the dark side, and was quite excited to finally have a QWERTY keyboard option. Friending me on Facebook offers little beyond practice in dealing with abandonment and not taking it personally. And my tendency to forget to charge my phone or to turn it back on after silencing it at a play or movie is a constant source of frustration to my nonvirtual friends.

At the same time, I am fascinated and even thrilled by the avenues for creativity, discovery and learning the Internet provides. For example, through random videos on the web, I have been able to hear amazing singers and musicians, been touched by social projects working to make a difference, gotten a sense of what it’s like to sail through the Alps wearing a wingsuit, witnessed feats of physical daring and emotional caring, learned how to make a killer plum jam, and developed a healthy respect for the honey badger.

By Suzanne Schrag | October 22, 2014

Suzanne Schrag, editor and product manager, shares some thoughts from the Healthy Teen Network Conference in Austin, Texas.

I’ve been enjoying my time here at the Healthy Teen Network Conference in Austin. Highlights of Tuesday’s events included a brief awards ceremony that provided me with inspiration and thoughts for the day. P3, the Georgia Public Private Partnership to Prevent Teen Pregnancy received the Outstanding Emerging Innovation Award, which motivated me to attend their session on Leading Collective Impact that afternoon.

By ETR | October 22, 2014

Ready to support greater participation of girls and women in computing and technology? Looking for some great resources to help in the effort? NCWIT has what you seek!

By Erin Fogarty, PhD cand, and Ryan Erbe, PhD cand | October 21, 2014

Here’s an energizer that was used with great success at the 2014 American School Health Association conference this month. The entire closing general session was revitalized with this one, so give it a try when your training needs an energy boost. 

By ETR | October 20, 2014

Do you have a sense of your biases and the ways they influence your thoughts and actions? There’s a good chance you’re less aware than you think you are.

By ETR | October 17, 2014

Why is this child holding his breath? What are men really saying when they catcall women? And what does compassion in action look like in a group of Canadian fourth graders? Check out some of our favorite videos of the past month.

By ETR | October 16, 2014

ETR offers an enthusiastic welcome to Louise Ann Lyon, PhD, as Senior Research Associate. Dr. Lyon received her PhD in Learning Sciences with a graduate certificate in Feminist Studies from the University of Washington. She will be joining ETR’s work on broadening participation of girls and women and other underserved populations in technology and computing.

By Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, MCHES | October 15, 2014

What an amazing experience. Like many of you, I’ve been following the activity on Twitter in support of #AllyWeek. Sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), this event gives us all an opportunity to reflect on the ways we and our organizations are stepping up to give support to LGBT youth.

I’ve been involved in the field of health education long enough to remember a time when even mentioning that LGBTQ students were in our schools and our sexual and reproductive health classes was a radical and courageous act. And I admit I did not always take that courageous path myself when the opportunity presented itself.

By John Henry Ledwith | October 14, 2014

There is some real excitement going around in the school health world. I just saw an impressive portion of it first hand at the 2014 American School Health Association (ASHA) conference in Portland, Oregon. This is one of the few places where a national audience of teachers, administrators and academics get together to focus on the future of kids through the vehicle of school health. This remarkable group of people has pumped up the volume and aimed the field towards a new level.

By ETR | October 9, 2014

We are delighted to announce that we’ve been awarded 5 National Health Information Awards for 2014 from the Health Information Resource Center (HIRC). The winning materials were all developed by the ETR Product Development Team. Congratulations to our hardworking team for their excellent work!

To see more of ETR’s health education resources, check our online store.

By Pamela Anderson, PhD | October 8, 2014

How serious is the problem of adolescent sex trafficking, and what can we do about it? These are issues ETR researchers have been looking at for some time. I’ve just heard some news that gives me hope that the health and education community is moving in a good direction on these matters.

By ETR | October 7, 2014

We like this study from Harvard researchers looking at child and adolescent BMI scores (body mass index) and their correlation with walkability in the children’s neighborhoods. Researchers looked at BMI scores from medical records for almost 50,000 children ages 4 to 18. Then they used 8 variables to score the walkability of the children’s neighborhoods.

By ETR | October 6, 2014

Like others working in the sexual and reproductive health field, we’re pleased to see new attention being paid to the standard of affirmative consent. Using the shorthand “Yes Means Yes,” this standard requires partners obtain “an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement” before engaging in sexual activity.

California Governor Jerry Brown also signed landmark legislation clearly defining affirmative consent and requiring that colleges and universities receiving state assistance apply this standard in their policies and procedures.

Here’s a general news report from CBS News, a commentary on the news from the Ms. Blog, and an inventive app called Good2Go that offers partners an opportunity to affirm their consent on their smart phones. 

By ETR | October 1, 2014

After 25 years, ETR’s headquarters in Scotts Valley, California, has moved to a new location—the Enterprise Technology Center. We’re just up the road from our previous spot. We’ve spent the past month packing up books, files and equipment, and we’ve done an impressive job of purging the things that were ready to move on to the land of recycled stuff.

Any move this big can be stressful. But as you can see from our photo, we’re also excited to be in a location that offers us greater opportunities for synergy between departments. We’re all on the same floor, and it’s easy to find each other. Our Operations and IT staff did a magnificent job of making the move efficient and smooth.

So hello from our new place in the universe! We’re at 100 Enterprise Way, Suite G300, Scotts Valley CA 95066. Phone numbers and email all remain the same. We look forward to being in touch.

By Karin Coyle, PhD

ETR's research team is testing some exciting new programs that ask middle and high school students to consider the ways romantic relationships influence their sexual choices and risks. We call this “contextualizing” sexual and reproductive health education—that is, using the context of relationships to build health-promoting information, attitudes and behaviors.

By ETR

Take a look at some of the videos we've watched and liked this month. Can video games make you smarter? How can you show unconditional love? And don't you want to know more about ETR's award-winning pamphlet "Birth Control Facts"?

By Stephanie Guinosso, MPH

This year I had the pleasure of developing a new workshop on a topic near and dear to my heart—fostering resiliency among vulnerable populations of youth. For this workshop to deliver a powerful impact, I had to tap into these experiences, guide participants to acknowledge and question their subtle assumptions, and reinvigorate their attitudes toward the topic. To do that, I had to gain their trust. Only then could they draw from their internal motivation to make use of the research and best practice.

By Eloy Ortiz, MURP | August 15, 2014
Research Associate, ETR

ETR’s Science Department has conducted many longitudinal studies, on topics ranging from health behaviors to computer science interests. We’ve usually surveyed students in class or online, and often our biggest challenge is just getting a consent form signed and returned by the parents. Once we have consent, we work with the students, gather and analyze data, and write up the results.

The Math Pathways project is different because it involves gathering detailed information from mothers and students, as well as teachers. The goal of the study is to gather information that can be used to increase mathematics achievement among Latino students. We needed to meet individually with both the mother and the student outside of class. This created some challenges that helped us learn a lot more about the lives of these students and their families.