Thursday, July 15, 1999
Area girls plan health conference for 2000
BY SUE MacDONALD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
No sooner had Dianne Dunkelman pulled off the first all-day Speaking of Women's Health (SWH) conference in 1996 than the questions started.
“When are you going to do something like this for our daughters?” women asked Ms. Dunkelman. “What about an all-day conference for teen-age girls?” “What about mother-daughter sessions?”
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AT A GLANCE
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• What: Teens 2000 Always Cool, a health and wellness program for teen-age girls offered by Speaking of Women's Health.
• When: Launches in September at Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati Country Day School and the Cincinnati Reform Jewish High School, culminating with an April 2000 all-day teen conference.
• Information: 345-6587, Dianne Rosenberg.
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One of those questioning women was Dianne Rosenberg,a Hyde Park educational consultant who was so caught up with the idea that she's coordinating the first-ever “Teens 2000 Always Cool,” an SWH program for high school girls that will culminate in an all-day teen conference next spring.
Walnut Hills High School, Cincinnati Country Day School and the Cincinnati Reform Jewish High School have agreed to participate. Starting this fall, Teens 2000 staff will form focus groups at the schools, select junior and senior teen ambassadors and offer consultation services on teen issues to schools' teachers, coaches, counselors and staff.
Several girls already have signed up with plenty of ideas in mind.
“I think this will help a lot and give people a lot more information,” says Lindsey Baldwin, 16, a junior at Walnut Hills. The quality of health-class information, she says, often depends on the teacher and how the class is run.
Becky Riser, 16, also a Walnut Hills junior, thinks mental health, coping with stress and handling peer pressure are prime topics for teen girls.
“Talking about mental health will be very, very helpful because a lot of teens don't now how to handle it and don't know how to talk about it,” she says.
“Something that has been a pretty big issue at our school has been eating disorders,” adds Sarah Pyle, a 17-year-old senior at Cincinnati Country Day. Stress and self-esteem for young women also are important, she says, because many young girls try too hard to “fit in” instead of discovering who they really are.
Teens 2000 has drawn corporate support from Procter & Gamble through Always, Secret and Tampax brands. It is a program to “create sisterhood,” develop a broad sense of personal health and well being among high school girls, and “create an ongoing dialogue within our youth about healthy living,” Ms. Rosenberg says.
“Teens need their own space and thinking,” says Ms. Rosenberg, who is leaving her school consulting/learning disabilities evaluation job to direct Teens 2000 as an SWH project. She is past president of Jewish Family Services.
“You can sit down and think you know what teens are thinking, and you can be totally off the mark,” she says. “We aren't assuming anything in planning this project. We're involving teens in every aspect of this program.”
Teens will select the Teens 2000 logo, identify issues of concern and help plan the April conference, which will be modeled after the successful Speaking of Women's Health conferences held every spring in the Tristate. Teens 2000 will feature speakers, gift packages for all participants, a luncheon, exhibit booths and breakout sessions.
Possible topics include stress management, personal safety, nutrition, date rape, drug and alcohol use, preparing for and coping with the first year of college, money management and health problems identified among certain female athletes (menstrual cessation, bone loss, eating disorders).
They hope the program will spawn interest in similar programs for boys.
Ms. Dunkelman and Ms. Rosenberg say the timing for such a program is ideal, given the recent attention paid to teen-agers on topics such as school safety, guns, exposure to violence, movie ratings, self-esteem and responsibility.
“When you give people information, they become empowered,” says Ms. Dunkelman, founder of SWH. “And it does change behavior.”
SWH conferences are now franchised to 20 cities nationwide, and Ms. Dunkelman hopes the same can happen with Teens 2000.
“Speaking of Women's Health is not about the speakers. It's not about the gifts,” she says. “It's about the women who come, and the same will be true of the teen-agers. This is going to be a day for them.”
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