Keep hope alive

HOW STAY ALIVE CAME ABOUT

By Susan Roylance

Susan RoylanceAs I attended international conferences to promote family-friendly public policy, the problems associated with HIV/AIDS were often discussed. It seemed that each year a greater amount of time was devoted to this rapidly growing world pandemic. In countries where AIDS was rampant, family structures were being torn apart as parents left behind millions of orphaned children. I remember writing the word “INCOMPREHENSIBLE” across my paper as I listened to the problems children were facing after the loss of their parents.

After coming face to face with this terrible reality during a visit to Uganda, I began an intensive study of HIV/AIDS and subsequently participated in an international conference on children and AIDS and the UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS. I consistently heard speakers say that there was a need to increase the communication between parents and youth, and that we needed to teach the children about HIV/AIDS before they became sexually active. After inquiring with USAID and others, I was told that there was a "glaring hole” in AIDS prevention for this type of program.

In the 1970s I had been involved in teenage pregnancy issues. When the birth control pill was introduced to the American public, it was commonly recognized that the condom had a high incidence of failure among teenagers.1

Thirty years later, I was watching a group of 14- and 15-year-old African teenagers perform a skit about HIV/AIDS. One of the girls said, “When you have sex, use a condom.” I remembered the failure rate among teenagers in the U.S. (where condoms are kept at the right humidity and temperature -- unlike in Africa) and thought, “Oh great, and this is supposed to solve the AIDS problem?” In this case, a condom failure would not just produce a cute little baby, it would be death! I determined that these children deserved better information. The adults of this generation needed to tell them the truth -- that condoms give only partial protection. If we could provide youth with correct information, we could help them to understand consequences and empower them to make good choices.

I contacted Wendy W. Sheffield, LCSW, who had previously written an excellent family strengthening program, and asked her to help write an HIV/AIDS prevention program for children. The result is a group of lessons titled, “I Will Live a Long, Loving Life.” As I talked with country delegates at the UN about the HIV/AIDS problem, regardless of their political leanings, they all agreed that they wanted the children to stay alive, so the program was named the “Stay Alive HIV/AIDS Prevention Education Program for Children.”

There is a “window of opportunity” between the ages of 6 and 14. In developing countries, most children who get the HIV virus from their mother at birth will die by the age of 5, and most children do not begin to be sexually active until the age of 14. It is during that “window” between 6 and 13 that we needed to reach the children -- to teach them about making good choices that will help avoid the HIV virus and prevent them from getting AIDS -- striking at the very root of this deadly disease.

Many studies in the U.S. show that communication with parents is a critical component of reducing teenage pregnancy, so the Stay Alive program was developed with a focus on the discussions between the parent or guardian and the child.

It is important to know that no one received any money for the development or writing of the Stay Alive program. It has been a labor of love -- for the children.

“The future of the HIV epidemic lies in the hands of young people. The behaviors they adopt now and those they maintain
throughout their sexual lives will determine the course of the epidemic for decades to come.”
(AIDS Epidemic Update: December 1998. UNAIDS: Geneva, p. 13)

1 A study done years later by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, showed that youth using condoms and having sexual intercourse experienced condom failure resulting in pregnancy at a rate of 25.8% over two years. Ranjit, Bankole, Darroch, & Singh, “Contraceptive Failure in the First Two Years of Use: Differences Across Socioeconomic Subgroups,” Family Planning Perspectives 33, 1 (2001).