Periods! Why These 8th-Graders Aren't Afraid To Talk About Them

Reproductive Health Uganda (RHU) Clinic is taking a youth centered approach towards teaching reproductive health. Their methods, which include having youth days, hiring youth peer counselors, and providing private rooms for youth to discuss their sexual health, allow them to reach teenagers. “As a result, their uptake of contraception has increased.”

Students in Scottish schools, colleges, and universities will now be able to access free sanitary products. This eliminates the indignity of “period poverty” and helps students avoid missing school due to being unable to afford sanitary products.

When a group of middle school girls got tired of having their periods treated as a stigmatized issue, they decided to start their own podcast in order to educate their peers and start a conversation around this natural process. "When I heard we were gonna talk about periods, at first I was disgusted and uncomfortable because that's just how I am," says Kassy Abad. "But once we got to talk about it, and I learned that what happens to me happens to all these other girls, it made me feel more comfortable. It made me feel safe."

In several small rural towns in Texas, mental health professionals from Texas Tech are offering telemedicine counseling to make up for a lack of counselors available in local middle and high schools. The Governor's office has now asked the successful school districts to develop a training program for teachers in other Texas districts in order to scale the model.

Statistics show that black women do not have their pain taken as seriously as white women, which is a contributing factor why some expectant black mothers are choosing to hire doulas for their pregnancies. The doulas do more than help with childbirth – they provide resources to the mothers leading up to the birth as well as hold health care practitioners accountable for their biases.

Based out of the city of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, a live radio show is tackling the stigma around mental health care by combining their platform with those in the mental health care field. Not only does the radio show discuss psychological issues on air, but it also offers free and reduced-cost mental health services to those that serve as guests on the show.

To help students access the resources they need while schools are closed due to the coronavirus, administrators in China are utilizing "a national cloud learning platform," as well as broadcast television. While both supplement online lessons, the e-learning approach equips students with tools to learn 12 different subjects.

Kadal Osai (Sound of the Sea) is a radio broadcast with programming designed for fishers and their families since 2016. It reaches about 50,000 people from 30 fishing villages within a 15-kilometer radius of the station’s headquarters. Twelve radio jockeys provide 24-7 programming, with climate change and marine conservation two popular topics. The programming has provided a conservation mindset for many local fisherfolk, leading to behavior changes and helping them adapt to the rapidly changing world. The shows have shifted how they value the lives of sea creatures and what the ocean provides more broadly.

To increase awareness of cervical cancer and the cancer-preventing HPV vaccine, Al-Ansar radio shares information about the disease, the vaccine and works to dispel speculation and misinformation about vaccines in general to those in underserved and hard-to-reach areas, as they’re often hardest to get vaccinated.

To enhance rural access to healthcare in Nigeria, the Parkers Mobile Clinic partners with local volunteers, healthcare professionals, educators, and community development advocates to identify and remedy unique healthcare gaps. Outreach programs are then designed to provide localized mental health support, nutritional counseling, and other reproductive health services.