In a region and state with many teen births, E. Ky. program helps young women teach sex ed outside the classroom

All Access EKY trains young Eastern Kentucky women to make
media campaigns for birth control. (Photo by Hero Images/Getty Images)

A group called All Access EKY is hiring young Eastern Kentucky women between 17 and 22 to create media campaigns for reproductive health, with a focus on increasing access to a full spectrum of birth-control options in Eastern Kentucky, Ivy Brashear reports for Yes! Magazine.

Barriers to getting birth control in Eastern Kentucky are "profound," Brashear reports, and extend way beyond the ordinary obstacles of cost and access to care, to things like having access to reliable transportation (there is no public transportation), knowing if the employees at the clinic go to the same church as your parents, or simply finding a doctor who is willing to prescribe it.

"This is all assuming she knows anything about her birth-control options in the first place," Brashear writes, adding that many young women in Eastern Kentucky "must battle abstinence-only sex education in their schools and a cultural veil of secrecy about their bodies in order to fully understand their options."

She reports that only six of the 19 health departments and federally qualified health clinics in All Access EKY's seven counties offer the full range of birth-control options, and have only four nurse practitioners at public health clinics who are qualified to insert intrauterine devices (IUDs). And the region has a high rate of teen births, Kentucky Health News reports.

All Access, which began in 2016, is working to overcome these barriers by offering young women from the region an eight-week paid fellowship to create educational films that focus on birth control, with interviews of local women about their reproductive health experiences.

The women have also produced social-media campaigns, set up tables at local festivals, and distributed printed materials through clinics and local businesses, Brashear reports in her story, titled "Where Birth Control is Scarce, Young Women Create Sex Education Outside the Classroom."

All Access is a collaboration between the Kentucky Health Justice Network, the national nonprofit Power to Decide, and Appalshop, the media and arts organization in Whitesburg, where the project is housed.