Healthy Respect to Address Jewish and Catholic Audiences 

The ever-expanding appeal of Healthy Respect’s abstinence message will be evident this week as the organization’s leaders speak at one event organized by the Jewish Child Care Association and another event sponsored by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn.

On Wednesday, March 14th, Dr. Nanci Coppola, Healthy Respect’s Director of Curriculum, will be a featured speaker at an “Abstinence and the City” Mini Forum sponsored by the Jewish Child Care Association and the New York City Association of Child Services Office of Youth Development. The event will be held, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., at the Manhattan headquarters of the Association of Child Services, located at 492 First Avenue (at 29th Street).

Dr. Coppola will speak about the medical myths surrounding abstinence education and show that abstinence is the only sure way for young people to avoid sexually transmitted diseases, teen pregnancy and other negative outcomes.

The special guest at the forum will be national abstinence speaker Rashida Jolley. Other topics at the forum will be sex in the media, goal planning and developing and abstinence program and implementing abstinence education in current programs.

John P. Margand, Esq., Chief Executive Officer of Healthy Respect will be the featured speaker on Sunday, March 18th, at the Catholic Speakers Series to be held from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Holy Family Parish’s Msgr. Mahoney Hall in Flushing, Queens. Mr. Margand’s topic is “Healthy Respect Programs in New York State Make Their Impact on Teenagers.” Holy Family Parish in located at Utopia Parkway and 74th Avenue.

In his talk, Mr. Margand will explain how in a few short years, Healthy Respect has had a measurable impact on thousands of public school students in Yonkers and New York City. He will draw from an independent evaluation of the Healthy Respect program that concluded that students were receptive to the abstinence until marriage message. The evaluation, by two Queens College sociologists, showed dramatic increases in the number of students who agreed that abstinence is the only certain way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and that it is the best way to avoid pregnancy.

Mr. Margand will also review the highly effective Healthy Respect abstinence education program which hires and trains male-female teams of instructors to deliver the program in a classroom setting.

Healthy Respect, based in the Bronx, reaches more than 1,500 New York area public school students each year with an abstinence message based on the development of self-esteem, social skills, academic effort and personal goals.

“We are very pleased to extend our message into the wider community through these two important speaking engagements,” Mr. Margand said. “We are committed to the health and well-being of New York’s young people. It is clear that more and more public organization’s are coming to realize the value of a well-planned and medically accurate abstinence education program.”

For more information on the Jewish Child Care Association event, call Eliza Puello at (718) 742-8501.

For more information on the Catholic Speakers Series event, call Dr. Florence Maloney at (718) 939-6646.