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Palo Alto Online

Who you gonna call?

by Muoi Tran

Being a teenager is tougher than ever, as conferences and reports have borne out over the past few years. On top of the physical and emotional changes, teens of this century are confronting stress, drugs and sexually transmitted diseases. And like their parents before them, they're generating a host of questions.

Many youth are turning to the Teenage Health Resource Line for free, anonymous and confidential answers to their health-related questions.

Part of Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, the program began operating in 1996 and now receives from 200 to 500 calls per month. Pediatric nurses answer the calls, seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Evenings and weekends are peak times for calls.

"It's a community service," said Marian Clare, a registered pediatric nurse who staffs the Teen Health line. "It's a place for teens to get direct answers -- we don't beat around the bush."

Clare has worked at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital for more than 10 years and said that calls range from girls who think they might be pregnant to boys who ask questions related to sports injuries.

The Teen Health line is not a crisis line, but Clare has received calls from depressed teens. In these cases, she transfers them directly to crisis lines, which can give them specialized help. However, Clare said she tries to talk them first, sometimes for half an hour or more, to find out what the problems are.

"Often, there are other things going on," Clare said. "I try to help sort things out."

The service is anonymous and confidential, and Clare said it's a factor in helping the teens feel more comfortable talking about their problems and asking questions.

"Most of the time, they start out with 'This is anonymous, right?'" Clare said. Sometimes, when she asks for the city they are calling from to fill out the call logs, the teens hang up immediately, she added.

Either out of fear or the need to be independent, Clare said that teens often have a hard time talking to parents and family doctors. Clare helps the youth figure out ways for them to start talking to their parents, such as saying, ''Hey mom, I really need you to listen to me."

Clare believes that having a confidential resource like the Teen Health line helps teens to discuss what's on their minds before they act. "You hear 13- or 14-year-olds calling in about whether or not to have sex," Clare said. "We say to them 'Do you feel like you're ready?'

"We talk to them and tell them we support them in not having to do that," she said. "Our goal is to support the teen caller."

Once in a while, Clare gets calls from parents as well. Usually, they want to know how to help their own teens. But she's received a few calls from upset parents when they find out that their children are calling the Teen Health line, but they don't know what it's about.

"A mother called last week because she found the Teen Health line card in her son's backpack," Clare said. "By the time we finished, she was impressed."

Terry O'Grady, the director of community and physician relations at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, oversees the Teen Health line. The program was developed in concert with the Palo Alto Unified School District. In 1995, the school nurse for Gunn and Palo Alto High School approached O'Grady about starting a health-resource line for teens.

The first thing they did was assess teens' needs by talking with students, parents, educators and pediatricians, O'Grady said.

The most important thing the teens requested was that the line be anonymous, O'Grady said. They created laminated cards with the Teen Health line's phone number and e-mail address to pass out to students. The cards were designed to be small to fit inconspicuously into purses and wallets.

According to information gathered from call logs for the past year, most of the calls come from teens in Santa Clara, San Mateo and Alameda counties. Sixty-four percent of the callers were females and 36 percent were males.

"I was surprised that one third of the calls are from guys," O'Grady said. "This is significant. I think it was expected that girls would go to it more and boys would go to their peers."

To her, it's a good sign that both boys and girls want more information about sex-related issues, the No. 1 topic.

O'Grady recently attended a community meeting to discuss adolescent health needs. "It's loud and clear that adolescents are an underserved population in terms of health care and access to information," she said. "It's not that there isn't information, but the reluctance to access it."

The approach of programs for adolescents must be non-threatening, she added.

Since the Teen Health line began, one of the challenges O'Grady has faced has been getting the word out that the program is available, and anonymous. Currently, about 29 percent are repeat callers, and O'Grady is working with students at local high schools to let others know about it.

With the issues teens are facing today, O'Grady said she is planning to introduce the Teen Health line to middle school students, too.

"High school might be too late," O'Grady said. To access the Teen Health Resource Line, call 1 (888) 711-TEEN or e-mail teenhealth@lpch.stanford.edu.