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(l-r)
Ana Louise Leary, Taphath Giles and Chantelle Ransome,
peer leaders in the Center for Young Women’s
Health. Taphath recently received the Mayor’s
“Be the Difference” Positive Image Award.
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of their peers hold part-time jobs at drug stores, movie theaters
and restaurants, but Taphath Giles, Chantelle
Ransome and Ana Louise Leary
have a different kind of after-school job. As peer leaders working
in the Center
for Young Women’s Health, their duties range from leading
health education sessions to helping residents learn how to talk
with teenagers.
The Center recently recognized the hard work and dedication of these
Boston Latin High School juniors when staff members nominated the
girls for the Mayor’s “Be the Difference” Positive
Image Award. The honor went to Taphath and five other teens from
across the city, and was presented by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino
at the Mayor’s Youth Summit on April 19. Although Taphath
won the award, she says she considers it a shared honor. “I
feel like I’m accepting it on behalf of all of us,”
she says. “I wouldn’t be able to do this work without
Chantelle and Ana. We do it as a team.”
The Center for Young Women’s Health provides clinical services
and resources, and promotes research and healthcare provider education
dedicated to improving the health and well being of adolescent girls.
The peer leaders’ responsibilities at the Center include giving
health-related presentations to kids as young as 8 and as old as
18, helping train residents in Adolescent Medicine and creating
health resources for teens.
One of the girls’ favorite jobs is giving health presentations
at YMCAs, schools, and other groups, which they do at least once
every other week. Their presentations hit topics such as nutrition
and fitness, healthy relationships and how to access health information.
The presentations always include ice breakers, games and role playing.
“We never just sit there and talk,” says Taphath. “We
have to make it interesting.”
That can be difficult—especially with an audience of squirming
8-year-olds. But Chantelle, 16, says the younger kids are her favorite
audience. “It’s kind of amazing how much they remember,”
she says. At their last presentation, she says, “at the end
they all gave us hugs.”
Older audiences present a different challenge because the girls
have to get their peers to take them seriously. Although it can
be intimidating, according to Ana, 17, they’ve been successful.
She points to a smoking cessation presentation they gave to a group
of teens who were visiting Children’s. “It went really
well, and I think we connected with them,” she says. “They
saw that we had something to share with them, and we weren’t
lecturing them.”
Their peers are not the only ones with something to learn from the
teenagers. Another aspect of their work at Children’s is helping
to train residents in Adolescent Medicine. “The doctors have
to learn how to talk to teenagers,” explains Chantelle. “We
make up characters with different problems, like depression and
eating disorders.” After the role-playing, the girls give
the doctors feedback.
The girls also participated in a panel at the annual Pediatric Adolescent
Medical Conference, helping doctors understand how to relate to
adolescents, and Ana and Taphath attended a national conference
on young women’s health in Washington, DC.
The list of their accomplishments goes on: the girls have been on
TV to make recipes from the Center’s cookbook, were photographed
performing exercises for an online, youth-oriented fitness guide
and produce a quarterly newsletter called Teen Talk. They also sit
on Children’s Youth Advisory Board, established to brainstorm
ideas for making the hospital more teen-friendly. “It sounds
like a lot of work, but I don’t look at it that way,”
says Taphath. “We’re always doing something different.”—CM |
