Nearing the end at CCBH

We are nearing the end of our capstone experience here at CCBH. Throughout our time here we have been doing a lot of outreach for the My Life My Body Family Planning Clinic.

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, two of us go over to the Tri-C West Campus for a few hours and sit at a booth to get word out about the clinic. We have a big tri-fold board we set up to get the attention of students as they pass by. On the table, we laid out lots of different pamphlets about sexual health topics such as: birth control choices, HIV, chlamydia, gonorrhea, etc. We also had condoms. People tended to be very shy about taking the condoms though. Our solution to this was to assemble small bags with condoms and the trick was that we concealed the condoms with candy. Then people were less funny about taking them because all they saw was the candy. In each bag we put a business card for the clinic, instructions on how to put on a condom the right way as well as how to take it off. We put tiny brochures about getting tested in there as well.

Some days we would sit there for hours and very few people would stop by the booth. Other days we would get quite a few people. We tried going at different times throughout the day to see when we'd get more people. Yesterday, Mary Clare and I had probably at least 12 people come by. Several guys just came up, took a few condoms, and walked away without saying much. The girls tended to be more talkative and ask questions. We did have a male student ask us what is the point of birth control which surprised me. At first I thought he was joking but it was actually a serious question. He then wanted to know how birth control worked so we got to do some teaching.

Tri-C was a wonderful place to market the clinic. There are several high school students who go there doing the PSEO option as well as many college students in the high-risk age bracket. I decided to put tear-off fliers for the clinic on the back of the bathroom stall doors in the women's restrooms at Tri-C. I figured this way people could take the information privately if they wanted.

This semester at CCBH has certainly made me into somewhat of an expert on sexual health, STDs and contraception. I did a lot of reading on these topics before we began outreach so that I would be prepared to answer questions people might have. I've learned a lot. I was amazed to find that a lot of the sexual health knowledge that I felt was just common sense really wasn't common sense for a lot of other people.

~Jill Belsan~