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| TeenNow California (formerly CACSAP) Newsletter |
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November is Native American Heritage Month!
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Greetings!
TeenNow California brings you a monthly newsletter with resources, news, opportunities, advocacy updates, and featured articles! We have a new-and-improved format...check it out and let us know what you think. Thanks!
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Expressing Gratitude to......YOU!
In the November spirit of giving thanks, TeenNow California would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to you, our dedicated service providers, teachers, counselors, health clinicians, educators, and supporters, for everything you do. You make a difference. YOU. MAKE. A. DIFFERENCE. Every smile, kind word, or piece of advice has the potential to change a young person's life. Your hard work does not go unnoticed. Thank you for all that you do for California's teens!
Vote for us on CHASE Community Giving Nov 8-Nov 22
TeenNow California could win $25,000-$250,000...with your help. Here are the simple steps:
1. "Like" CHASE Community Giving on Facebook
2. Vote for TeenNow California on the CHASE Community Giving website between November 8 and November 22!
3. That's it. Thank you for your support!
Support Teen Sexual Health by "liking" us on FB! TeenNow California brings you updates, links, and news about sex education, teen pregnancy prevention, and other related topics via Facebook. Spread the word to your clients, peers, and students!
For 2012: Become a TeenNow California Board Member!
Do you stand behind our mission - to increase the knowledge, skills and resources of individuals concerned with adolescent pregnancy, parenting and prevention? BECOME A BOARD MEMBER and work for change in your region! Apply Today!! Please Support TeenNow California Use Goodsearch.com (under "Who Do You GoodSearch For" type in "TeenNow California") and GoodShop.com and do some good - support TeenNow California. Please donate today to help us amp up our advocacy work, trainings, and conferences! With your help, we can increase services and better serve your needs. To donate today, visit our website. Follow us on:     |
Interview: Judith Clark, MPH
Judith Clark, MPH is the Executive Director of Hawaii Youth Services Network (HYSN), a statewide coalition of more than fifty youth-serving organizations and a Pacific Islands training and technical assistance provider. She also serves as a federal grant reviewer and peer monitor for youth programs. Judith was named Hawaii's Outstanding Advocate for Children and Youth by the Hawaii State Legislature in 2005 and Hawaii Youth Services Network won a similar award in 2010. In her interview with TeenNow California, Judith shares insight into culturally relevant sex education for youth in Hawaii, challenges unique to Hawaii, and strategies for teen pregnancy prevention. Read the interview and more about Judith
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Nominations Being Accepted for Community Health Leaders Awards Program
The 2012 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leaders awards program will recognize individuals working to address health challenges in their own communities. Nominees may be someone doing exceptional work to improve local health or access to healthcare, or someone who has solved a daunting community health problem. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation selects ten unsung heroes each year to receive the award, which includes national recognition, opportunities to network and collaborate with fellow health leaders around the country, and $125,000 in support of the honoree's work. The winners receive tools and knowledge to help them continue their efforts to improve health and healthcare where they live. Selected leaders come from diverse professional backgrounds and regions of the country. Recent award winners are providing compassionate care to dementia patients; supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth; providing free health care to homeless women; and developing support services for brain injury survivors. Get more info and nominate someone here
New Careers in Nursing Program Announces Call for Applications
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation New Careers in Nursing program is designed to help alleviate the nursing shortage and increase the diversity of nursing professionals. Through grants to schools of nursing, the program will provide scholarships to college graduates without nursing degrees who are enrolled in accelerated baccalaureate and master's nursing programs. Through the program, funds to support up to four hundred scholarships of $10,000 each will be awarded to selected schools of nursing annually over a three-year period. A school of nursing may apply for between five and thirty scholarships a year, to be awarded to students from underrepresented groups in nursing or who are economically disadvantaged. Preference will be given to schools which can demonstrate that the availability of scholarship funds will expand enrollment in their accelerated nursing programs. Get more info and apply here
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 Tribes to Form Consortium for Healthcare Reform The California Rural Indian Health Board hopes to form a consortium of tribes to administer healthcare reform for Indians and native Alaskans in 37 rural California counties. Healthcare reform is coming to California ahead of most the nation under California's Bridge to Reform, a joint federal and state program to make primary and specialty care available to adults who do not have insurance or the means to obtain it. Indian tribes have a complicated relationship with federal and state government due to their status as sovereign nations, and health care for native Americans is equally complex. California has about 700,000 people who identify themselves as Native Americans. But the definition of who is an Indian is mired in tribal and federal government politics. The federal government provides health care dollars for Indians through the Indian Health Service program under the Department of Health and Human Services. The program was set up 90 years ago with the Snyder Act, as a compensation for the government taking of Indian lands, and the consequent collapse of the culture and health of the population. IHS money is not an entitlement, however, and depends on how many dollars Congress allocates to it each year. The budget runs about $4 billion, of which $180 million is spent in California. That number is woefully inadequate, according to Indian health care administrators - providing as little as one-third of the money needed to provide adequate service. Read more CDC Panel Endorses HPV Vaccine for Boys Ages 11-26 A federal advisory committee has recommended boys and young men be vaccinated against human papillomavirus, or HPV, to protect against anal and throat cancers that can result from sexual activity. The recommendation by the panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is likely to transform the use of the HPV vaccine, since most private insurers pay for vaccines once the committee recommends them for routine use. The committee recommended that boys and young men ages 11 to 26 be vaccinated. In 2006 the committee recommended that girls and young women ages 11 to 26 be vaccinated, but vaccination rates in the United States have so far been disappointing. The vaccine has been controversial and that controversy is likely to intensify with the committee's latest recommendation since many of the cancers in men result from homosexual sex. "This is cancer, for Pete's sake," said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and a nonvoting member of the committee. "A vaccine against cancer was the dream of our youth." HPV infection is the most common sexually transmitted disease - between 75 percent and 80 percent of females and males in the United States will be infected at some point in their lives. Most will overcome the infection with no ill effects. But in some people, infections lead to cellular changes that cause warts or cancer, including cervical, vaginal and vulvar cancers in women and anal cancers in men and women. A growing body of evidence suggests that HPV also causes throat cancers in men and women as a result of oral sex. Read more Male Birth Control Update Male birth control is a key focus of the Future of Contraception Initiative, which kicked off at the end of October and is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Researchers will grapple with safe, realistic options that might soon be available -- expanding our current scant array of condom or vasectomy. "The United Nations is predicting the world population is going to hit 7 billion people in the middle of this conference, and in a lot of those cases, it's women who get pregnant and did not want to," said Dr. William Bremner, professor and chair at the University of Washington's Department of Medicine and one of the organizing committee's members. "Birth control helps couples and communities and nations to have more control," he continued. "Certainly, there's a huge need for new contraceptives." A need, and also promise. Among the most imminent options are hormonal contraceptives for men. By combining testosterone and progestin, the synthetic hormone also present in many female birth controls, researchers have found they are able to turn off sperm production in most, but not all, men. Bremner estimated there are 2,000 to 3,000 men in trials who have been on hormonal methods over the last 10 to 15 years. When available to consumers, they could be taken in pill form, implanted in the skin, or applied as a gel or patch. Now the question is when they might actually hit the market. Read more New Study on Native American Women Involved in Prostitution
A groundbreaking study of Native American women in prostitution reveals astronomical levels of assault, homelessness, substance abuse, and related problems among one of the most vulnerable populations in the United States. Conducted by the nonprofit Minnesota Indian Women's Sexual Assault Coalition and the San Francisco-based Prostitution Research & Education, the study is based on interviews with more than 100 Native women, the first of it's kind. Nearly half the women in the study had been used by more than 200 sex buyers, and 16 percent had been used by at least 900 sex buyers. At the time of their interviews, 52 percent of the women had posttraumatic-stress syndrome, a rate comparable to that of combat veterans. Although 92 percent of the women said they wanted to escape prostitution, the study reported that "there are currently few or no available services especially designed for Native women in prostitution." According to Sarah Deer, coauthor of the study, Native people compose 1 to 2 percent of the American population today, with about half living on reservations at any given time. And yet "the rates of sexual violence against Native women are two and a half times higher than those in the mainstream population," says Deer, a leading expert on violence against Native women. Despite the historical depiction of Native people as "savages," crimes against women were rare in indigenous cultures prior to colonization. "Native people had strong laws that prevented the epidemic levels of violence you see today," Deer reports. "A lot of tribal communities were matrilineal or matriarchal, and many tribal laws would have imposed the death penalty for mistreating a woman or child. When it started happening in tribal communities, the perpetrators were military- or missionary-based, and the Native people were unprepared to deal with the consequences. Even today, most of the perpetrators of these crimes against Native women are non-Native, which is unusual. Most violent crime in the United States happens intraracially; the victims and the perpetrators are almost always the same race. The only exception to that is Native women." Read more
American Academy of Pediatrics Calls for HIV Screening for Sexually Active Teens In a new policy statement that broadens earlier recommendations the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests all sexually active adolescents be screened for HIV. And in areas with higher rates of the infection, all teens over 16 should get the test, the group added in its statement. More than 1.1 million Americans are infected with HIV, and 55,000 of them are between 13 and 24 years old. "Forty-eight percent of the youth who are infected don't know they are infected," said Dr. Jaime Martinez of the University of Illinois in Chicago, who helped write the new report, published in the journal Pediatrics. "It's important to realize that those who don't know they are infected drive the epidemic," he says. Today, many doctors only offer testing to patients they deem at risk, such as prostitutes, drug addicts and homosexual men. But since 2006, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have urged everybody older than 13 to get an HIV test regardless of risk factors in areas with many undiagnosed cases. He added that in 12th grade, more than 60 percent of adolescents say they are sexually active -- and that often they're having sex while under the influence. Not all experts agree that screening is the best approach to prevention nor that is is cost-effective. Read more Evaluation Finds Recruitment Approach Nearly Doubles Likelihood of Adoption from Foster Care In 2010, more than 107,000 children in foster care were waiting to be adopted. Ultimately, less than half were adopted, and they tended to be, primarily, the very young children under the age of 12. Older children and those with special needs were less likely to be adopted. A five-year evaluation, led by Child Trends, found children served by a child-focused recruitment model experienced substantially higher rates of adoption than children not served by this model, and that the approach is even more effective for older and special needs children. The child-focused recruitment model is used by DTFA's signature program, Wendy's Wonderful Kids (WWK), which provides local adoption agencies with grants to hire dedicated adoption recruiters who spend 100 percent of their job focused on finding waiting children forever homes.Child Trends' evaluation of the child-focused recruitment model found several promising results: - Children in foster care served by Wendy's Wonderful Kids are 1.7 times more likely to be adopted than those not served by WWK.
- For older children, the impact of WWK is even greater, with the likelihood of adoption up to three times higher than for children not served by WWK.
- For children with mental health disorders served by WWK are three times more likely to be adopted
- than those not served by WWK.
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 Hearing Announcement: "CalWORKs: Program Overview, Recipients, and Current Status"
- Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 1 on Health and Human Services
- Assemblymember Holly Mitchell, Chair
- CalWORKs: Program Overview, Recipients, and Current Status
- Thursday, November 3, 2011, 1:30 PM
- State Capitol, Room 126
This is the initial step to explore the possibility of restoring funds for Cal Learn. It is important that everyone who was or is involved with Cal-Learn/WTW (including those very interested and somewhat interested) receive this information. Carla Hill will be testifying on behalf of CAL Learn as part of the hearing agenda. It will be important to have strong representation at the hearing. Public comment will be taken at the end of the hearing and individuals will be able to say a few words (1-2 minutes depending on the number of people who want to give public comment) on why CAL Learn funds need to be restored in the next fiscal year.
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 Region 7
Free Human Trafficking Workshop
When: Friday November 11, 2011, 10am
Where: 2180 Iowa Avenue, Riverside, CA 92507. Community Room of Habitat for Humanity, Riverside (HFHR). HFHR is located on Iowa Avenue near its intersection with Spruce Street.
What: Operation SafeHouse's November General Meeting will be on Human Trafficking, a focus area of AAUW. Jennifer O'Farrell, Anti-Human Trafficking Director, Operation SafeHouse, will be the presenter. Jennifer is the representative of Operation SafeHouse on the Steering Committee of the Riverside County Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force (RCAHT). RCAHT was formed in 2010 as a collaborative between the Riverside County Sheriff Department and Operation SafeHouse. The Steering Committee now includes the Department of Homeland Security, the Riverside County District Attorney's Office, Million Kids, and the United States Attorney's Office. Lunch will be provided immediately following the meeting (or during it if time is needed). Lunch will be at a nominal fee of $10. Please RSVP to Jo Turner at 951-786-3966 or jot888@sbglobal.net by no later than November 9, 2011. Please let her know at that time whether you wish lunch or not. The meeting is open to all who are interested in this problem and how we can help. Please let your friends, relatives and neighbors know of the meeting. Attendance is free.
Region 8
Free Community Health Fair
When: Saturday November 5, 2011, 10am-1pm
Where: Linda Vista Recreation Center, 7064 Levant St., San Diego, 92111 What: Healthcare providers and healthy living specialists from all over San Diego will join Assemblymember Toni Atkins to offer free information, testing, and services to all. Offerings will include vision screening for children, cholesterol and blood pressure tests, and free flu vaccinations. Experts will be on hand to assist attendees with applications for public health coverage such as MediCal and California's food stamp program, CalFresh. This state sponsored program helps improve the health and well-being of qualified households and individuals. There will also be information on everything from housing to senior services. Partners include the UCSD Eye Mobile for Children, the UCSD Cardiovascular Center Team, and the County of San Diego Department of Health and Human Services. For more information, call Toni Atkins' San Diego office at 619-645-3090. |
Dolores Huerta Foundation Hiring Youth Leadership Program Coordinator
Under the direction of the Executive Director of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, the Youth Coordinator is responsible for implementing youth projects /programs. The project aims to actively engage, mobilize and empower youth in Lamont, Arvin and Weedpatch. Located in Kern County, CA. Read the job description and apply here
Hiring?
E-mail tnca@teennowcalifornia.org and we will post your job announcements here. Your position will be sure to reach a variety of health and teen pregnancy professionals.
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TeenNow California (formerly CACSAP)
(619) 741-9650
3468 Citrus St. Suite F
Lemon Grove, CA 91945
www.teennowcalifornia.org
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Become a TeenNow California Member!
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Support pregnant and parenting teens; help us prevent teen pregnancy. If you are an existing member, now is the perfect time to renew your membership! If you are not a member, we encourage you to join today! As a member you get access to all the latest TeenNow California news and events, as well as other benefits. Check out the brochure, join online, or contact us.
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TeenNow California is a state-wide organization that provides training, technical assistance, advocacy, and professional development opportunities to those working with adolescents.
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