Healthy Respect Presents Facts on Abstinence to Social Scientists

Presenting details on the growing scientific and sociological evidence for teen abstinence, Healthy Respect representatives were among the hundreds of invited panelists at the 15th annual national conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, held at St. John's Law School in Queens, New York.

At the two-day conference, which featured 71 panel presentations, Healthy Respect's CEO, John P. Margand, Esq., spoke about how the program is reaching students in high school and intermediate school with a positive message of character development and healthy choices that help young people achieve their goals. Over the past four years, Healthy Respect has been conducting abstinence for marriage programs for schools in New York City, Yonkers and Long Island, reaching nearly 4,000 students with an intensive program designed to provide teens with the knowledge and skills necessary to making healthy choices.

Dr. Nanci Coppola, Director of Curriculum for Healthy Respect, presented the findings from the evaluation of the program, and discussed the latest advances in contemporary abstinence education programs nationwide, including an increased emphasis on medical accuracy, scientific evaluation and sound evaluation protocols. "We were privileged to have been invited to this prestigious meeting of social scientists and to present the findings from the professionally conducted evaluations of our program," Mr. Margand said. "The audience was interested in hard facts and data, and we were able to give them statistics that demonstrate, a significant positive change in attitude and knowledge regarding abstinence among our students."

Evaluation of the Healthy Respect program are conducted by two social scientists from Queens College who test students' attitudes and knowledge before and after they take the program, and also test a comparison group from the same school that does not take the course.

During the panel presentation, Mr. Margand also showed the DVD "Abstinence Education: A Fresh Approach," which includes scenes from an actual Healthy Respect classroom and personal testimony from students, teachers, principals and other educators about the effectiveness of the program. (Click here to view the nine-minute DVD).

In speaking about Healthy Respect, Dr. Coppola noted that, "Medical accuracy and the dissemination of truthful information concerning the risks and consequences of sexual activity are key parts of the curriculum." Students are given the opportunity to compare abstinence - or "risk prevention" - to other sex-education methods that stress "risk reduction" through use of condoms, Dr. Coppola said.

Addressing the ongoing debate over "abstinence" vs. "comprehensive" sex education, she stated that despite some recent studies that have been touted in the media, "There are studies indicating that well-designed abstinence education programs can reduce teen sexual activity."

"We were encouraged by the positive reaction we received from our presentations," Margand said.

"Abstinence educators are working more closely than ever with the medical and social science communities, and we are confident that this relationship will continue to develop."