By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
CASSOPOLIS – Sex sells, and so does pizza, when it comes to attracting hungry parents.
HealthWorks! Kids' Museum in South Bend, Ind., has made presentations to as few as one parent, but they had an audience of more than 40 Wednesday evening when Lewis Cass Intermediate School District broke out the Saylor's slices served with salad, soft drinks and dessert.
The only problem – and it didn't seem to be one – was that Laura Garvey, HealthWorks' "composer of creativity," found herself chewing over such delicate topics as sexually-transmitted infections (STIs) essentially as supper table talk as visitors polished off sausage and pepperoni pies.
"We're going to recommend pizza at all the parent nights," Jeanne Rogers, HealthWorks! "matchmaker" and community relations coordinator, said.
"We're going to be working with the school to deliver their sex ed programming," explained Rogers. "We have a lot of Michigan school systems we work with. We do all of the Benton Harbor schools, all of the Eau Claire schools and all of the Niles schools. We go to the schools, but then we also have a lot of schools that come to us" at the 7-year-old health museum at 111 W. Jefferson in South Bend that is sponsored by Memorial Health Foundation Inc.
The interactive facility boasts that "kids make our skin crawl," a reference to a climbing wall complete with freckles, hair, pimples and wrinkles.
The health museum offers the Main Brain Theater, an exhibit floor, educational programs, from puberty ("I'll Have Hair Where?") to nutrition ("Grape Soda for Breakfast") and a grinning, brain-brimmed Hummer wearing a bike helmet.
HealthWorks! is a haven for birthday parties, corporate events, foster care training, parent and family workshops, babysitter certification, summer camps, fitness programs and special community adventures.
General public hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday (September through May), noon to 4 p.m (closed June-August).
General admission costs $4.
HealthWorks! was developed as part of Memorial Hospital's vision to make South Bend the healthiest community in the nation.
"Last year we saw over 70,000 kids of all ages," Rogers said.
"This is a preview of what your students will be getting in class," school nurse Chris Van Husan told parents.
Puberty instruction focuses not only on visible outer changes, "that we've gotten taller and developed in different ways," but on hygiene. "As you're older and you're running around, getting all sweaty, Mom doesn't think you smell sweet anymore and she tells you to go take a shower. We talk about deodorant and shampoo," said Garvey, who comes from a family with four children. "We also talk a little about nutrition and eating disorders. We are affected by media messages we see every day, comforting people that we all were created different and we all were built in different ways. Our bodies are all meant to look differently. We're not all going to be size 0 super models, darn it."
"Pictures" illustrating reproductive "body parts" are simple line drawings.
"We separate boys and girls into two separate classrooms to put them more at ease to ask questions, as it is a sensitive topic in our society," Garvey said. "In the girls' classroom we spend some time on menstruation, which I think is wonderful. I didn't truly understand my menstrual cycle until I was in nursing school, which I think is way too late for a woman to understand what's happening in her body and why.
"We can see the outside of the body, but the most important things are inside and we can't open a door and check them out. We talk about how irregular periods can be during teen-age development years and what they should see a doctor about. Fortunately, it's very rare, but we talk about Toxic Shock Syndrome. I was at the grocery store last night and realized there is a whole aisle of feminine hygiene products. It's a little bit overwhelming, so we teach basics of the products – how they're used, how they're disposed of, how often they should be changed. If they have concerns, we're constantly sending them back to you, the parents.
"In giving them more information, obviously, our hope is to get them comfortable with the topic so they can go home and continue this conversation with their primary teachers."
Cancer prevention is another concern, be it self breast exams for girls or self testicular exams for boys. "We don't have them practicing in the classroom or on each other," Garvey assured parents, "but we encourage them because you're never too young to be familiar with your body so if and when there are changes, you'll recognize them. Unfortunately, the teen-age years is when testicular cancer is very prevalent."
The boys classroom introduces erections and ejaculation as "normal events that don't necessarily mean you've been sexually aroused," Garvey said. "Our male class is taught by a male educator. A female teaches the girls class. Both of them learn about the opposite sex as well."
The girls class lathers up a mannequin leg with shaving cream and practices with a razor – much as males rehearse whisker removal on a fake face.
"We like to spend as much time as we can on healthy relationships," she said. "Whether it's boyfriend-girlfriend or friendship," four kinds of abuse signal unhealthy relationships – physical, sexual, emotional and neglect.
"We help them practice saying no when someone crosses that line and makes them feel uncomfortable, and finding an adult they trust that they can talk to, whether it's a parent, teacher, doctor or nurse. Unfortunately, abuse won't ever go away – especially if you're quiet about it," Garvey said.
Once they are familiar with both genders' body parts, Garvey said, students are exposed to "sexual intercourse and conception, how we are all here today on the face of this planet. We looked up sexual intercourse in the dictionary and got a good laugh because it goes on and on with all these big words. By the end (of the definition), if I was a teen-ager, I would still have no idea what it is. We try to keep it simple – the joining of a man and woman with their genitalia and the eggs within females and the sperm within males and how the two join together to form a new human that grows and develops inside the mother's body."
Garvey said the program touches on primary developmental stages and "familiarizes them with the fact that, unfortunately, miscarriage happens frequently, as upsetting as it may be for a mom and dad who are excited and expecting a baby. Students usually have a wonderful conversation about what it takes to be a good parent It's a hard thing to go through alone, without a support system in place, or having the maturity to be ready to raise a family of your own."
Birth control options "are overwhelming," Garvey said, listing condoms, the pill, the patch, the ring, the diaphragm, female condoms, spermicide and the "only 100-percent way of guaranteeing that you will not become pregnant," abstaining from sex.
"We really try to stress that because it's the number-one way" to control spreading disease.
With each form of birth control, the curriculum covers how it works, its effectiveness if used correctly, various advantages and disadvantages and cost.
Garvey noted the term "sexually-transmitted disease," or STD, has fallen out of favor, with STI preferred.
"We also cover very quickly methods that are not recommended" for teens, including sterilization, IUDs, withdrawal and fertility awareness, which "takes a lot of practice to be in tune with your cycle. It's not dependable."
"You might not want to have kids now," she said, "but maybe in another 10 years you might want to think about having a family, so it might not be time to get your tubes tied when you're 15 years old."
"Pregnancy isn't the only thing we're concerned about," Garvey said. "In fact, we're really concerned about the transmission of disease through sexual contact or intercourse. We talk about the immune system, a great army inside of you that fights off invaders. It keeps you well and safe. We talk about how the immune system is broken down if someone contracts HIV. We tell about modes of transmission and myths of transmission – you can't get it from a door knob, from a toilet seat or from hugging someone. You can get it from any kind of sexual intercourse. You can get it from needles, so you need to be careful with piercings and tattoo parlors and making sure things are done in a sterile way."
HealthWorks' instruction dwells on three common STIs, chlamidia, herpes and HPV, the cervical cancer-causing human papilloma virus.
"More than anything," she said, "we stress that there may be no signs or symptoms. You can look at a person and they might seem safe to have sexual intercourse. We're careful to stress that condoms are one of the only forms of birth control that prevent disease. Just because someone's on the pill doesn't mean they're not going to get AIDs.
"The final message is abstinence is the only 100-percent way to guarantee you will not get a disease or infection. That's where we like to leave our focus in the sex education class and the HIV/AIDS class. For a lot of reasons – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual."