PoliBlog

Amy Schalet, assistant professor of sociology, will discuss “Beyond Abstinence and Risk: A New Paradigm for Adolescent Sexual Health Policy” on Monday, December 6, at 12 p.m. in Thompson 620.  This is the final talk in this fall’s Center for Public Policy and Administration Faculty Colloquium.

Schalet’s talk will draw upon her extensive research of factors that foster and impede sexual health among adolescents. According to Schalet, policies and practices that help teens to make their own decisions, that support positive relationships with romantic partners and caregivers, and that recognize the diversity that shapes sexual experience are all important to fostering adolescent sexual health.

Schalet’s findings derive partly from her examination of adolescent sexuality in the Netherlands, where teenagers are eight times less likely to give birth than teenagers in the U.S.  Lower poverty rates and better health care in the Netherlands contribute to this disparity, but cultural differences between the two nations are critical.

More specifically, while sex education remains controversial in the U.S., with abstinence often promoted among teens, the Dutch view sexuality as part of an adolescent’s normal development and encourage responsible sex education and contraception.

Schalet’s analysis suggests the need for Americans to modify their current understandings of healthy adolescence and to promote policies that encourage personal empowerment and positive relationships among teenagers.

Schalet is the author of Raging Hormones, Regulated Love, which examines approaches to adolescent sexuality in American and Dutch middle-class families (forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press).  She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley and an undergraduate degree in social studies from Harvard University.  Prior to coming to UMass Amherst, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.  She is a founding member of the UMass Public Engagement Project Steering Committee, and works regularly with physicians, nurses, educators and youth advocates through mutually productive interprofessional exchanges.

Schalet’s work has been supported by two multi-year grants from the Ford Foundation.

This talk is free and open to the public.  Brownbag lunches are welcome. For additional information, go to www.masspolicy.org or contact Kathy Colón (kcolon@pubpol.umass.edu).

On November 4, 2010, Peter Levin, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Advisor to the Secretary in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, will speak on the UMass Amherst campus about the VA’s efforts to create a more open and transparent government. Dr. Levin’s seminar is 1:15 to 2:30 p.m. in the Computer Science Building, room 151.

As the first Chief Technology Officer for the VA, Dr. Levin has spent the past year identifying opportunities and implementing new technologies to better serve veterans and their families. The VA’s efforts – prompted by President Obama’s 2009 Open Government Initiative which challenged federal agencies to become more transparent, collaborative, and participatory – demonstrate how technology can be used to make government more accessible and responsive to citizens’ needs. For instance, the VA has used popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to connect veterans and their families online and to circulate important news and announcements.

The VA is also using technology to transform how veterans receive information about health care, disability benefits, and education opportunities. The “Blue Button” project and the “MyHealthVet Portal” are the Department’s attempts to not only electronically track the health, benefits, and administrative records of service men and women– encompassing information from enlistment all the way through retirement from the military and beyond – but to make that information accessible to veterans with the click of a button. Today, veterans can view their medical histories and refill prescriptions through the Portal. And they can securely download and share medical information with health care providers.

Dr. Levin has a long and distinguished career in both government and technology. Prior to becoming chief technology officer, he was a White House Fellow during the Clinton Administration; he was a Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the Assistant to the Counselor to the President. He was also an expert consultant in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he co-edited the 1997 Biennial Presidential Report to Congress on Science and Technology, and co-authored its chapter on technology.

The seminar is organized by the National Center for Digital Government and sponsored by the Qualitative Data Analysis Program, the Center for Public Policy and Administration, the Laboratory for Advanced Software Engineering Research, Electronic Enterprise Institute, and the Isenberg School of Management.