CVAHEC Student Project Reports

Abigail A. Donaldson
Freeman Scholar Program

In November of 2002 I joined two other first year medical students in organizing and delivering a series of lunch-time discussion groups at the Spectrum Center for Teen Services in downtown Burlington.

Each Monday during our lunch hour we presented a health-related topic to the teenage residents, drop-in patrons, and staff at Spectrum. Our discussions ranged from demonstrating safe condom use to the physiology of Attention Deficit Disorder. Regardless of the topic, however, we were regularly met with enthusiastic questions, insightful comments, and heart-wrenching stories of personal experiences.

My decision to apply for Freeman Summer Project support was due to my desire to make our curriculum more permanent both for future medical student facilitators and for the Spectrum population. As a result, I spent one hundred hours of my summer researching, writing, and compiling information on a wide variety of topics, many of which we taught in a more haphazard and impromptu manner during our previous seven months at Spectrum. I also continued to participate in the Monday lunchtime discussions, allowing me to test the curriculum as it was being created.

My work at Spectrum has certainly enriched my perception of healthcare. In listening to a fourteen year-old describe her experience in heroin rehabilitation during a discussion on drug use I learned that for many individuals health education can never start too early. By encouraging an enthusiastic, sexually active young woman to demonstrate correct condom use to the group I learned that despite repeated exposure to sexual education, many teens still have questions that must be answered accurately; during the same discussion I was impressed by the vocal assertion of several teens eager to advocate abstinence to their peers.

We recently discussed family and peer relationships, and following the discussion I was discouraged by the unusually quiet group. The Spectrum social worker chased us down the sidewalk as we left, however, saying that it was a particularly pertinent subject: interpersonal communication and relationships had been particularly destructive lately at Spectrum and she attributed the group’s silence to their sincere curiosity on how to best cope with difficult family and peer relationships. I have learned that in the lives of adolescents, appropriate health information can deeply impact many aspects of an individual’s life; this has motivated me to work on this summer’s health curriculum project.

These weekly interactions have made the past few months—and my past year at Spectrum—an extremely meaningful experience. Each week I get a fresh understanding of how important health education is, especially among young adults who might not seek regular medical attention but are facing difficult health-related decisions such as whether or not to use recreational drugs, become sexually active, or pursue destructive relationships with others.

The creation of a health curriculum for the Spectrum lunchtime discussions—with sets of complementary information for the Spectrum Shelter and their staff social worker—will provide a written template for future medical student facilitators. We have included not only lesson outlines, objectives, and relevant information in a suggested teaching format, but we have found pertinent journal articles, local and national resources available on each topic, and many enlightening brochures for Spectrum teens to peruse and take home with them.

I am hopeful that these collected resources will be well-used in the effort to raise awareness of health issues among teens.