In the fall of 1996, Memorial Hospital partnered with SBCSC to develop and implement an abstinence education program for eighth graders called Sex Can Wait. The program is based on the "Postponing Sexual Involvement" (PSI) curriculum developed by Marion Howard, Ph.D., and Marie Mitchell, R.N., of Emory University and Grady Health System, respectively. Community Partnership Manager and Prevention Initiatives developer Sharon Nieb took a leadership role in bringing the program to fruition, a task that included involving the curriculum authors in the process. "We wanted a program that had proven to be successful," Nieb explains, "and a national search of the literature revealed that PSI was one of the few abstinence programs that had been evaluated. Once we decided on using the PSI curriculum I convinced Dr. Howard that we were committed to excellence in replication and that we needed her assistance. In order to develop a program to its highest potential, training and guidance from the author is essential."

The goals of Sex Can Wait are to help young people:

understand the pressures in our society that influence their behavior
understand their rights in social relationships
avoid situations that might lead to sexual involvement
deal with pressure situations through the use of assertive responses
postpone sexual involvement.

The five-session program is designed for eighth graders in participating schools within St. Joseph County, and is presented by teen leaders (typically high-school juniors and seniors) who are recruited, trained, and supervised by Memorial staff. In addition, there is a two-session program for parents (conducted at various sites throughout St. Joseph County) that provides input on how to help their children become more aware of and more resistant to social pressures. The message is simple: through effective communication, parents can help their children find ways to achieve status, acceptance and respect without becoming prematurely sexually involved.

Baby Think It Over

In response to the resoundingly positive reception of Sex Can Wait in eighth grade classes, Baby Think it Over (BTIO) was initiated in 1997 as a compatible, voluntary-participation program for seventh graders. Baby Think It Over is designed to help early teens understand how having a baby would change their lives--before they find out the hard way. The program uses a life-size infant simulator with a small computer inside that approximates infant behavior; whenever the "baby" is hungry, sleepy, attention-deprived or in need of a diaper change, it "cries." And just like a real parent, the person caring for the baby never knows when the crying might start. When it inevitably does, participants must attend to their babies by using special keys to stop the crying, while the simulator tracks their attentiveness. The program includes a one-and-a-half-day workshop at which the students name their "babies," learn how to operate the simulators, and receive assignments (including an intensive journaling exercise) to carry out over a weekend with the simulator. Upon returning to class on Monday, participants spend a full day learning about the emotional, financial and educational consequences of teen pregnancy.

In SBCSC Director of Student Services Rosalind Ellison's opinion, Baby Think It Over has been extremely successful in providing its participants a truly formative experience. "At first," she explains, "we were worried about getting enough kids to run eight sessions; now we have students on waiting lists. The students think it's an exciting program. Many of them have seen their older siblings bring the dolls home and have actually been looking forward to participating in the program. Fortunately, once they spend a weekend with the dolls they usually come back and say they've had enough. This is what we want to have happen." Ellison has even had parents come to the school corporation and request that their children take the BTIO program. This trend of parental involvement and support is one that Ellison sees as crucial to all the Prevention Initiative programs: "Involved parents help to open the doors of communication to their children. Students can come home and talk to their parents about the information they receive during the program, and this kind of communication helps to reinforce the messages that we are trying to send."

Baby Think it Over was conducted for the first time in the South Bend Community School Corporation during the 1997-1998 school year. A pre- and post-evaluation was given to all participating students, and a total of 160 students completed the evaluation process. Over the past several years, program numbers have increased dramatically. In 2001, over 900 students in St. Joseph County participated in Baby Think It Over.

The positive results of pre- and post-evaluation surveys during the 1997-1998 school year provided SBCSC and Memorial with statistical information about the impact of the program and helped to instantiate the program throughout South Bend schools and eventually in other school systems as well. Both the pre- and post-evaluation surveys consisted of fifteen questions, and of these fifteen, nine were appropriate for analysis. Among the questions analyzed, six showed statistically significant change between the pre- and post-evaluation surveys using a t-test. Furthermore, when evaluating Baby Think It Over, nearly all students highly recommend that other students participate in the program. Some students, in fact, have promoted the program by creating posters.

What these findings show is that Baby Think It Over has a significant impact on the attitudes of teens enrolled in the program. In most cases, both the age at which students hope to have their first children and the number of children they plan to have changed significantly from the pre- to the post-evaluation. In addition, participants frequently changed their minds about the toll that having a baby can take on relationships between parents. The following list represents a sampling of the questions that participants are asked to consider:

How important do you think it is to have a spouse or partner in raising a child?
How do you think having a baby affects a couple's relationship?
How important is it to you to reach your career goals before having a child?
Overall, do you think caring for a baby is very easy, easy, neither easy nor difficult, or very difficult?