What's Happening

By Bianca Palmisano | July 25, 2017
Owner, Intimate Health Consulting

Ask before kissing your date goodnight. Don’t grope strangers on the train (I mean, really, don’t grope anyone). Don’t force your children to give hugs or kisses to family members against their will. Our culture is becoming more accustomed to conversations around consent in intimate, interpersonal relationships.

But we are still fairly unfamiliar with how to model and apply consent in professional relationships. 

By Diana Andrews | June 27, 2017
PREP Program Manager, Garfield County PREP

I thought the really hard work had already been done. Three years ago, when I became the PREP Program Manager for Garfield County, Colorado, my predecessor had already gotten so many things accomplished. As impressive as her achievements were, however, it turns out that may have been the easy part!

By Taylor Vandenbossche, MPH | June 22, 2017
Graduate Research Intern, ETR

What comes to mind when you hear the words “young father”? I’ve noticed the narrative behind teen pregnancy often focuses solely on the thoughts and feelings of the mother. Funding and programs primarily serve teen moms.

So what about the young fathers? 

By Shaunae Motley | June 20, 2017
Director of Programs, Quest for Change

Every May, our communities mark National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month. It’s a fine opportunity to reflect on the difference prevention work makes in the lives of young people. Since peaking in 1991, teen births have dropped 64%. This historic decline includes significant progress in all 50 states and among all racial and ethnic groups.

However, despite these advances, disparities continue to exist—by age, race and ethnicity, geography and among youth from low-income families. 

By Mandy Ackerman, LMSW, MPH & Jenifer DeAtley, LMSW | June 14, 2017
Senior Program Coordinator & Director of U.S. Programs, EngenderHealth

Here’s a story that gives us chills—the good kind. A group of our peer educators presented a plenary at a local conference. They shared their personal stories before an audience of about 100 youth-serving professionals from the Central Texas community.

These peer educators are all young mothers. 

By Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, MCHES | May 24, 2017

A group of developmental neuroscientists walks into a room. They sit down with some sexual health experts. They all talk about ways to support healthy adolescent development.

What happens then? As it turns out, some pretty amazing things.

By Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, MCHES | April 7, 2017

Teen pregnancy rates are down. A wide range of statistics and figures show this. If you work in the field of adolescent health, you’ve certainly already heard this news.

Think for a moment about how you hold that information in your mind. Perhaps you remember the rate of births per 1,000 females aged 15-19 years. You might think about a national map that shows state rankings in teen birth rates. Maybe colorful bar graphs or pie charts come to mind.

By Elizabeth McDade-Montez, PhD | March 28, 2017

TV is not what it used to be. Over the past decade, we have seen a range of new methods of content delivery (Netflix, AmazonVideo, Hulu), new ways of watching (bingeing on favorites, catching short segments on YouTube, checking out cute kittens suggested by friends on Facebook), and new ways of calculating ratings.

Unfortunately, although television platforms have clearly modernized over time, television themes and stereotypes around gender and sexuality have not. 

By Gina Lepore, MEd | March 16, 2017

 “Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”

This saying is usually credited to Oscar Wilde, probably erroneously, but I love it anyway! It brings home an essential truth. When we talk about norms related to sex and sexual consent, we are often actually talking about norms related to power.

By Ayn N. Whyte, MS—Diné | March 14, 2017
STD/HIV/AIDS Prevention Program Manager, Albuquerque Area Indian Health Board

As many of our communities prepare to recognize National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, I am compelled to honor the group of individuals who envisioned and made this day a reality. I am blessed to work today with many of these people in raising awareness and promoting testing among our people. 

By Pamela Anderson, PhD | February 9, 2017
Senior Research Associate, ETR

I’m having a sentimental parent moment. Our three-year-old is looking at the iPad. She is trying to defy gravity by watching her show upside down. The iPad falls on her face. She falls off the couch and hits the floor.

Our almost-seven-year-old immediately sprints over to help and console her sister. 

By Lizanne Reynolds, JD | January 30, 2017
dfusion

I am excited to be working on a new dfusion program called Live Your Best Life AHORA! This is an innovative teen pregnancy prevention and sexual risk reduction program for rural Hispanic youth and their parents in California’s Central Valley. Our program partner is the California Health Collaborative (CHC), which has worked closely with the community for many years to promote healthy practices.

By ETR | January 23, 2017

Do you know graduate students in public health? Epidemiology? How about education, psychology, sociology or related fields? Do they have an interest in sexual and reproductive health?

We’d love you to let them know about one of the finest summer internship opportunities around: the 2017 Kirby Summer Internship at ETR.

By Jennifer Salerno, DNP | January 5, 2017
Founder, Possibilities for Change

How sexually active—and sexually risky—are today’s teens?

Scientific studies continue to support the notion that teens today actually have less sex than their parents did as teens. Yet nearly one in four teens will become pregnant by age 20, and half of the new STDs in the U.S. each year occur among people between the ages of 15 and 24. 

By Karin Coyle, PhD | December 19, 2016

ETR is delighted to announce the release of our report on the 2016 Kirby Summit. If you work with adolescents to address sexual and reproductive health, I strongly encourage you to check it out.

Here’s why. We deliberately designed this invited Summit to challenge and disrupt what we thought we knew about adolescent health behaviors.

By Laura Perkins, MLS | December 15, 2016
Product Editor, ETR

Thought about menstrual periods lately? Maybe, maybe not. But if you were a pre-menstrual kid, teetering on the edge of puberty, you'd probably be thinking about them a lot.

By BA Laris, MPH | December 13, 2016

We were excited for the much-anticipated release of The National Center for Transgender Equality’s new 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey Report.