Speaker: 

Kim Nolte

Title:

Sex Education in the Era of Technology

Abstract:

Each year in Georgia over 11,000 girls between 15-19 become pregnant and about half of sexually active youth under age 25 experience a sexually transmitted infection. Comprehensive sex education is effective at assisting young people to make healthy decisions about sex and to adopt healthy sexual behaviors. Yet, for so many youth in Georgia medically accurate, age appropriate sex education is not available to them in their school systems. Less than 10 of the 180 school districts in Georgia provide comprehensive sex education.

For so many years professionals in the field of health education have been trying to get sex education in the school systems, but have run into road blocks related to policy, budgets, political will, and fear of controversy.

While adults continue to argue over whether young people should have access to comprehensive sex education in schools, the billion dollar porn industry has made sexual content easily accessible to young people through technology. With the rapid change of technology and young people’s access to it, now is the time the field of health education to abandon its 1970’s model of sex education and begin to reach young people through the media they use most.

In this Brown Bag lunch seminar, Kim Nolte, President and CEO of Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential will discuss their current work in Georgia to institutionalize sex education in schools, their use of technology to reach young people and open a discussion for other ways to use technology to give young people the tools and skills they need to make healthy sexual decisions.

Bio:

Kim M. Nolte, MPH, MCHES is the President and CEO of the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power & Potential, a state-level organization that focuses on the health and well-being of young people. GCAPP was founded in 1995 by the actor, activist and philanthropist Jane Fonda.

Kim obtained her Bachelor of Arts degree in Hispanic Language and Literature from Boston University and her Master of Public Health from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She began her career in public health as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala working with Maya Indians. It was that two year experience that transformed her life and ignited her passion for public health. As a Peace Corps volunteer, Kim saw firsthand how civil war, poverty, lack of education, limited access to health services including access to contraceptives, and chronic malnutrition adversely affected children, families, communities, and an entire country.

Kim is a nationally recognized public health professional with over 25 years of demonstrated leadership, results, and commitment to adolescent health. She has worked both domestically and internationally on maternal child health and adolescent health programs at the local, state, and national levels. Kim has been working for GCAPP for eight years, first as the Vice President of Programs and Training and now as the President and CEO. Previously she worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kim has lived in Spain and Guatemala, is fluent in Spanish and has studied four other languages including Mam, a Maya Indian language. She is a life-long dancer and has performed in two professional dance troupes. She is currently working on her black belt in taekwondo.

Please join Kim and several of her staff to brainstorm ways in which we can partner with GCAPP. Course projects, MS-HCI projects, dissertations, foundation grant proposals - the sky's the limit. Brainstorming starts immediately following the brown bag, in the GVU Cafe - TSRB second floor, next to the stairway.