Alliance: The NiteStar Program
The NiteStar Program
The NiteStar Program is a peer model, multi-component, school and community-based health education and early intervention program, with a strong emphasis on the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, NiteStar addresses such issues as intimate partner and relationship violence, making healthy lifestyle choices, preventing substance abuse and unwanted pregnancy, gender issues and the many other challenges young people face in growing up in the current climate. The program is built on the belief that a significant impact on adolescent health is possible only if young people are provided with comprehensive and accurate information about health issues presented in a way that impacts upon them in ways that are meaningful and memorable.NiteStar employs the performing arts, particularly music and theater, as its medium. Theater has a long history of being a powerful teaching tool and instrument for social change, and has a profound and lasting influence on young audiences, which is unmatched by traditional teaching methods. NiteStar uses age-appropriate and culturally sensitive theatrical methods to empower youth with the skills they need to lead healthier lives. In all of the work, theater plays a central role in communicating lifesaving information to populations that are very difficult to reach in traditional ways.
The Program is now in its eighteenth year. Originally a part of the Mount Sinai Medical Center's Adolescent Health Center, it is now housed at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center as part of the Center for Comprehensive Care.
In the past three years, Dr. Berlin, Founder and Executive Director of the Program, has been teaching the theater-based techniques which are the backbone of NiteStar's methods to providers and peer educators throughout Eastern Europe under the auspices of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). At their invitation, she has recently conducted workshops in Bosnia-Herszogovina, Croatia, Moldavia and Morocco.
NiteStar has won many awards, among them the American Medical Association's Award for Excellence as the best prevention program in the country and a CableAce award for Excellence in Educational Television.
Copyright © 2000-2009 by The New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault