Jessica Folmer
California Baptist University
Jessica Folmer, Research Associate in the Department of Public Health Sciences at California Baptist University, earned her BS in Health Science-School Health Education from California State University, San Bernardino. Jessica’s main focus is in adolescent health risk prevention research and program evaluation. Her projects have included an evaluation of a federally funded teen pregnancy prevention program, NIH adolescent drug use research, and multiple nutrition and physical activity program evaluations. Jessica has presented at numerous conferences including CAHPERD, SOPHE, ASHA, and WPA. Outside of her research, Jessica enjoys cooking, traveling, and volunteering in community events.
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Getting Comfortable With Teen Pregnancy Prevention
School-based health education is the primary resource for adolescents to learn the skills necessary to decrease unhealthy behaviors and avoid diseases or disorders. This interactive session will discuss teacher comfort with teen pregnancy prevention and demonstrate unique health education teaching techniques. Participants will experience effective and ineffective practices in teen pregnancy prevention with recommendations for increasing effectiveness in health education.
As the role of the health educator continues to change in the schools, it is important to understand how that might impact student behavior and the effectiveness of the programs we implement. While our recent efforts have shown steady decreases for many health risk behaviors, there is still much to be considered when implementing evidence-based health programs and curriculum. Various studies have examined the role of implementation fidelity: the extent to which a program or curriculum is implemented, and how it affects behaviors. Using fidelity data and teacher surveys from a federally funded evaluation of a teen pregnancy prevention program, this presentation will show how comfort in health education, specifically teen pregnancy prevention, correlates to how well a program is implemented. Although teen birth rates have dropped 10% from 2012, there were nearly 270,000 babies born to women ages 15 to 19 in 2013 (CDC, 2015). This session will present the need for trained health educators in teen pregnancy prevention. Session attendees will be asked to participate in group surveying, and volunteer in group demonstrations on effective teen pregnancy prevention teaching techniques.
Friday 1:30 - 2:30 pm
San Thomas/Lawrence
School-based health education is the primary resource for adolescents to learn the skills necessary to decrease unhealthy behaviors and avoid diseases or disorders. This interactive session will discuss teacher comfort with teen pregnancy prevention and demonstrate unique health education teaching techniques. Participants will experience effective and ineffective practices in teen pregnancy prevention with recommendations for increasing effectiveness in health education.
As the role of the health educator continues to change in the schools, it is important to understand how that might impact student behavior and the effectiveness of the programs we implement. While our recent efforts have shown steady decreases for many health risk behaviors, there is still much to be considered when implementing evidence-based health programs and curriculum. Various studies have examined the role of implementation fidelity: the extent to which a program or curriculum is implemented, and how it affects behaviors. Using fidelity data and teacher surveys from a federally funded evaluation of a teen pregnancy prevention program, this presentation will show how comfort in health education, specifically teen pregnancy prevention, correlates to how well a program is implemented. Although teen birth rates have dropped 10% from 2012, there were nearly 270,000 babies born to women ages 15 to 19 in 2013 (CDC, 2015). This session will present the need for trained health educators in teen pregnancy prevention. Session attendees will be asked to participate in group surveying, and volunteer in group demonstrations on effective teen pregnancy prevention teaching techniques.
Friday 1:30 - 2:30 pm
San Thomas/Lawrence