The North County cities of Vista and Oceanside have some of the highest teen pregnancy rates in California. In fact, their rates are more than double the state average. For more than 12 years, the Vista Community Clinic has been trying to combat the problem by using teens to provide sex education and outreach. KPBS Health Reporter Kenny Goldberg has the story.
Angie Matias stands across the street from Vista High School. She holds a bag full of condoms and brochures. As kids walk by, Matias hawks her wares.
Angie Matias: Hey guys, you want some free condoms today? Have you heard of Choices Teen Clinic? Did you sign up for this card? No? Did you want to sign up it real quick, it just takes a minute?
This free card is given to anyone who gets reproductive health services at the clinic. The card helps track how often a person accesses care. That tracking is important, because the clinic sees about 700 teens a month.
Matias and other Vista teen clinic providers go to schools, community events, parks…anywhere teens hang out.
Matias says she doesn’t usually talk about sex when she’s doing outreach work.
Matias: I just go briefly over the services we offer, and I do offer condoms to them all the time. If they do need to speak about something a little bit more private, I kind of go to the side, and let ‘em know that they could come in for more in depth information at the clinic, ‘cause that’s what we want. We want them to go to the clinic to get a one-on-one session.
Matias says the clinic is where teens can get information about sex, how to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and how to protect against sexually transmitted diseases. It’s also a place that offers free testing for HIV.
She says kids get sex education in school, but…
Matias: Nobody sits down and tells them, there’s like six steps to using a condom correctly. You know, check expiration date, check air in the bag, check if there’s no holes. Another way, if they’re gonna have oral sex, to have protection. I never heard about protection for oral sex until I started researching it.
Matias and other teen providers aren’t just winging it.
Before they can counsel other teens, they get 120 hours of training. Then they have to pass an oral and a written test to get certified by the State Office of Family Planning .
At the clinic, teen provider Jose Garcia explains to a young patient how the birth control pill works.
Jose Garcia: So, the birth control pill consists of two different hormones, estrogen and progestin. Together, they raise the hormone level in a woman’s body to pregnancy level, so if your body thinks it’s pregnant you’re not going to get pregnant…..
This patient says she likes getting information from people her own age.
Patient: You feel more comfortable, of course. You can ask like different questions like, what will this cause and what will this cause and what don’t people like about this and stuff. And this place is confidential, like really confidential. Like, they’re not going to call your house and tell your mom and stuff.
Dr. Kelly Motadel is the clinic’s medical director. She says in general, kids in the area aren’t well-educated about sex.
Dr. Kelly Motadel: They also come from a culture where it’s not acceptable to discuss these sorts of things in the home. So they’re less likely to have found resources to be able to get condoms, or to get birth control, or to be educated on sexually transmitted diseases and other reproductive issues.
So how effective are the peer educators at the Vista Community Clinic?
Researchers at UC San Francisco evaluated the program a few years ago. 35 percent of female patients at their first visit to the clinic said they always used birth control. That number rose to 52 percent after their last visit.
That’s a big increase. But it still means about half of these young women failed to use birth control at all times.
Teen provider Angie Matias admits she doesn’t know whether kids actually listen to her, or they just want free contraceptives.
Matiasa: But I know I made a difference in that person, and I made them think twice about getting tested, and about starting a new sexual partner, and actually getting them tested before they have intercourse.
That may be. But there’s clearly still a problem with teen pregnancies in Vista and Oceanside.
The Vista Community Clinic has a prenatal care program. About 170 women access it each month. Clinic officials say about one quarter of these patients are adolescents.
Kenny Goldberg, KPBS News.
