What is The PEERS Project?
In 1994, St. Vincent Hospital and Health Care Center, Inc., in Indianapolis, Indiana, initiated the development of an innovative positive youth development program to create a new paradigm: Instead of teenagers being the problem, they are now part of the solution! PEERS prevention model helps to maximize the influence or peer pressure of young role models. a high school or community’s youth sub-culture makes St. Vincent Hospital chose this peer-facilitated approach because youth development models were proving to be one of the most effective ways to constructively guide adolescent 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.
“Our peer mentors’ influence has changed the texture of our school, and they are making it a better place.”
-- Matthew Stark, Principal, Brown County High School, Nashville, IN
PEERS: Peers 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]
The National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health surveyed more than 90,000 teenagers and confirmed what we already know: Major risk behaviors facing youth—alcohol, tobacco, sex, drugs and violence—are inextricably linked. Add Health also found that “protective factors” are primarily parents who are positive role models, peers who are a positive influence, and “feeling connected to school.” Students who have these supports are more likely to succeed academically, graduate from high school, and complete college.
One of our challenges as educators is to prevent the onset of any one of these risk behaviors by recommending productive opportunities for students to connect with both positive adult and peer role models and school. Since 1994, The PEERS Project, a youth development model that is in about 50 school corporations in Indiana, has actively engaged about 20,000 “peer mentors” who have led by example and motivated their peers to make healthy choices.
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
