The PEERS Project
PO Box 1410
Indianapolis, IN
46206

Ph. 317.592.4015
Fax 317.592.4009

About The PEERS Project

What is The PEERS Project?

In 1994, St. Vincent Hospitals and Health Services in Indianapolis, Indiana, initiated the development of a peer-facilitated, healthy relationships, abstinence and marriage education intervention to promote character development and reduce sexual activity among adolescents. St. Vincent Hospitals chose this approach because youth development models were proving to be one of the most effective ways to constructively guide the adolescent sub-culture and affect its attitudes and behavior.

The heart of The PEERS Project’s intervention is its teenage mentors, and PEERS’ primary goal is to invest in young leaders through adult mentoring, character-based education, peer support, and a coordinated, progressive series of activities and experiences.

» PEERS complies with the A-H definition of abstinence

The PEERS Project:  Educating and Encouraging Relationship Skills

Adolescents need to have positive peer support systems, such as The PEERS Project, to avoid risk behaviors.  Youth are highly influenced by a desire to please their friends, to be part of the “in crowd.”  It is much easier for young people to choose to avoid risk behaviors if their friends share these values.[1]

Research studies have found that teens want their parents’ guidance: parents have the greatest influence on their decision-making.  Parents can help protect their kids from engaging in risk behaviors by:

• Connecting with them emotionally with time and love
• Sharing and modeling their values
• Setting and enforcing rules and limits
• Monitoring their activities, discussing the risks of tobacco, alcohol, drugs and premarital sex. [2]

Compared to teens who engage in risk behaviors, teens who avoid risk behaviors are more likely:

• To perform better academically
• To reach future goals
• To have a healthy self-image
• To have greater resistance to peer pressure and more respect for parental and societal values. [3]

Risk behaviors are inter-related. Compared to adolescent boys who abstain from sexual activity, sexually active boys are:

• 4 times more likely to smoke
• 6 times more likely to use alcohol
• 3 times more likely to be expelled from school
• 8 times more likely to attempt suicide [4]

Compared to adolescent girls who abstain from sexual activity, sexually active girls are:

• 7 times more likely to smoke tobacco
• 10 times more likely to smoke marijuana
• 2 ½ times more likely to drop out of school
• 3 times more likely to attempt suicide. [5]

The truth about condoms:

Although condoms reduce the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STI), they do not eliminate it.  With consistent, correct use, condoms are the most protective for HIV (85%). However, condoms only reduce the risk for contracting chlamydia, herpes, and human papillomavirus (HPV) by 50%. [6]  STIs also can be spread through oral sex. [7-10]

Does abstinence education really work?

Compared to non-participants, The PEERS Project’s participants were four times more likely to have remained virgins. [11]  Seventy percent of PEERS program participants reported that they had remained committed to abstaining from sexual activity at the conclusion of a 3-year independent evaluation. [12]

Three out of four of 30 Hoosier counties that use PEERS’ program had a significant reduction in their teen birth rate from 200 to 2005. [13]

The cost of teen births

$9.1 Billion:  The cost to taxpayers (federal, state and local) of teen childbearing in the US in 2004

$195 Million: Total costs to Indiana taxpayers associated with teen childbearing in 2004

$1,355: Average annual cost associated with a child born to a teen mother in Indiana.

What we save through preventive education, such as PEERS

$6 dollars: The amount effective abstinence education programs have saved taxpayers for every $1 spent.

$6.7 Billion: Estimated national cost savings by taxpayers in 2004 due to the one-third decline in the teen birth rate between 1991 and 2004.

$123 Million: Estimated cost savings for Indiana taxpayers in 2004 due to the decline in teen birth rates between 1991 and 2004. [14]

References:

1. Moore K & Zaff J. Building a Better Teenager: A Summary of “What Works” in Adolescent Development. Washington, DC: Child Trends. 2002.  See also Kasen S, Cohen P, Brooks J. Adolescent school experiences and dropout, adolescent pregnancy, and young deviant behavior. Journal of Adolescent Research. 1998; 13:49-72.

2. Udry, JR (2003). National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), Wave I, April-December 1995. Chapel Hill, NC. Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  See also Protecting Adolescents from Harm, The Journal of the American Medical Association. 1997 Sept 10; vol 278, #10.

[3. Ibid, Waves I & II, 1994-1996.

4. National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse IX: Teen Dating Practices and Sexual Activity. National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, Columbia University, New York, New York. 2004.

5. Ibid.

6. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Workshop Summary: Scientific Evidence on Condom Effectiveness for Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Prevention. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: 2001. Available from http://www.niaid.nih.gov/dmid/stds/condomreportpdf. Accessed 2006 Nov 20.

7. Edwards s, Carne c. Oral sex and the transmission of non-viral STIs. Sex Transm Infect 1998;74 (2) 95-100.

8. Hawkins DA. Oral sex and HIV transmission. Sex Transm Infect 2001; 77(5); 307-308.

9. Morris SR, Klausner JD, Buchbinder SP, et al. Prevalence and incidence of pharyngeal gonorrhea in a longitudinal sample of men who have sex with men: the EXPLORE study. Clin Infect Dis. 2006; 43(10) 1284-1289. Epub 2006 Oct. 10.

10. Laskaris G. Pl10 Oral manifestations of orogenital bacterial infections. Oral Dis. 2006; 12(s1)2-3.

11. Ferraro KF, Pallone K. Peers Educating Peers about Positive Values (PEP): Influence on Sixth-Grade Students and Parents, 2006-2006. Purdue University.

12. Ferraro KF, Pallone K. Peers Educating Peers about Positive Values (PEP): Evaluating Student Participants and Mentors, 2004-2005. Purdue University.

13. Indiana Natality Report 2000. Table 30 Age-Specific Birth Rates by County or Residence and Age of Mother: Indiana Counties 2000. http://www.in.gov/isdh/dataandstats/natality/2000/tabl30.html

Indiana Natality Report 2005. Table 30 Age-Specific Birth Rates by County or Residence and Age of Mother: Indiana Counties 2005.   Available from http://www.in.gov/isdh/dataandstats/natality/2005/tabl30.html

14. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. www.teenpregnancy.org/costs

 

How it works

High school counselors and teachers recommend "role model" students, and PEERS application process screens these students to find out who are committed to abstain from sexual activity and drugs. These exemplary students are trained by adult coordinators to present the Peers Educating Peers about Positive Values© (PEP) curriculum. Small groups of four to six peer mentors teach PEP’s lessons. Most often, each group of volunteers only presents one lesson and misses one day of school per semester. This is credited to them as community service and is an excused absence. The ratio is approximately 12-15 peer mentors for 125 program participants. These teens present PEERS informative, engaging, interactive program to middle school and high school students in their health or physical education classes.

PEERS also collaborates with youth-serving, community-based organizations that have after school and/or summer programs, and its peer mentors present its lessons in either English or Spanish. PEP has been translated into Spanish and is entitled Compañeros Educando Compañeros©.

Without preaching or moral judgments, PEERS mentors teach its scripted, research-based and fully referenced lessons on the following topics:

Special needs populations who receive the PEP program are pregnant and parenting teens and students with developmental disabilities who are attending partnering schools. Nineteen percent of PEERS mentors and program participants are minority populations. PEERS’ collaboration with the Indiana Family and Consumer Science Education Association is providing training and healthy relationships, abstinence and marriage education resources to high school family and consumer science teachers.