 Happy Friday! I'm Kaui Lucas and this is Hawaii is my mainland here every Friday at 3 p.m. on Think Tech Kauai and this week I was hanging out in a bar with a bunch of nasty women and I thought wow why don't I just bring them on my show! One of them was a senator she's not with us tonight but one of the women in the bar was a senator and I realized it's the second time I've been hanging out with a US senator in a bar full of millennials in the last couple of months. Maisie Hirono. Maisie Hirono is an incredible asset to Hawaii. She is. So it was Maisie and I were both there to celebrate you both and Planned Parenthood. I have two CEOs here. This is a first for me in 55 shows. A doubleheader. We have Elaine Rose who is the CEO of Planned Parenthood Votes of Northwest and Hawaii. And you are Chris Shevno who is the CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands. Yes. I love the Hawaiian Islands. I know. I thought it was poetic. Very nice. We really appreciate it. It's wonderful. It's wonderful to be here. So it's a big deal this year. 100 years. We are not only 100 years old nationwide as Planned Parenthood but we are 50 years old here in Hawaii on the islands and so it is worth celebrating all of the work that people have done to make sure Planned Parenthood is here and all of the people who we've been able to serve over the course of those five decades. And over 100 years I was shocked when I saw that actually. I never thought about it but wow 100 years ago really. Planned Parenthood got its start in 1916. Margaret Sanger and her colleagues smuggled diaphragms into the country stashed in pickle vats on boats. Wow. Yes because at that time it was considered obscene to either talk about, educate about or contemplate contraception. And they went to Holland and got some diaphragms and brought them over and began to educate women who at that point were struggling with the idea of 15, 16 children over the course of their reproductive lives, many of which whom did not survive. And it must have been tragic for people trying to feed a family when they had no control over how that was working. So it was a very important thing to have happen. Yeah. And there's all sort of a byproduct of the industrial revolution really that we didn't have natural spacing and women working aren't able to do nursing. So it wasn't like we just figured it out. It's just that the technology was slow and catching up with our new reality. Well there's actually a museum in Toronto about contraception worldwide over the millennia. And ancient Egypt had some contraceptive methods and condoms were made out of a variety of things. But what we began to need was sort of a much more mass produced availability as the population increased pretty drastically and as people needed more security about how they could space their families and children. Actually here in Hawaii, I don't know how widely known it is, but I have read studies that we had both the knowledge of using herbs and pessaries, which are an ancient form of iodine. Oh, ancient form of diaphragm. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, not inside the uterus. That would have been trickier, but outside, sure. Okay, well we have another one, a short video that your organization has put together talking about this historic moment. Let's take a little look at that and come back and talk some more. Planned Parenthood's story began 100 years ago with a radical idea that access to sexual and reproductive health care had the power to change lives in the world. This idea sparked a reproductive revolution by a brave and defiant few. It was not easy. It was not without opposition. But these few were joined by millions more over many years and across many generations. Planned Parenthood, once a single health center, is now known and trusted for sexual and reproductive health care. We're the largest source of sexual education in the country. And an essential provider of cancer screenings, diagnosis and treatment of STIs, and other preventive care, as well as a catalyst for laws and policies that ensure equal access to health care and reproductive freedom. And that's just our first hundred years. Moving toward our second century, we still face opposition. It's still not easy. Yet we are determined. Determined to build a world free of stigma and judgment. A world where neither income nor zip code. Determines access to birth control or abortion. A world where the rising generation will know. Embrace and continue to build. On Planned Parenthood's proud legacy. And a second century. Defined by as much compassion, conviction and courage as our first. Because we care. We always will. No matter who. No matter where. No matter what. And freshly imported into our downtown studio here at St. Tech, Hawaii is Lori Field. Lori, you are here. You are one of our on-island staff members of Planned Parenthood. Tell us about what you get to do. Sure. So I'm the Hawaii Legislative Director and the Public Affairs Manager for Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest in Hawaii. I'm not only the lobbyist, but I'm also the person who works with a lot of our volunteers. We have a community organizer in Hawaii who together we operate a fabulous program of volunteers who are out and about even today looking to get out the vote for our upcoming election and hoping to ensure that women's health is protected from here on out. So let's talk about that election a little. This last legislative session I was working in one of the offices and all of a sudden heard this spew erupt from the floor of the House of Representatives. And I thought, wait a minute, that's the nice representative from Eva Beach who's just down the hall. Wait a minute, what's happening here? And followed 20 minutes of everybody looking kind of nervous as all of this. It erupted and I guess many people know that Bob McDermott has this really vitriolic stance about Planned Parenthood. But as I began to talk to you all about it, I realized, well, you're used to this. Although I have to say that it was interesting looking at that from the mainland because the sex ed curricula that was being discussed is really incredibly highly regarded nationwide. And for it to be controversial in Hawaii was a little surprising. And so we run into that from time to time, someone who takes a different point of view, and that's legitimate in a pluralistic society. But we are really grateful that the vast majority of the people in Hawaii understand how very important sex ed is and have been incredibly supportive of it. And in fact, Hawaii has the most progressive sex education law now in the entire United States, bar none. And you have a right to be very proud of that. Thank you, Lori and team for all of our allies in that for the work that was done. Well, how did that happen? That sounds like a lot of work. Well, as Chris was saying, Hawaii is not immune to having people who object to the work that we do. In this case, it's just a matter of ensuring that people have the education that they need to make good decisions, whether that's our youth who are receiving sexual health education or the community leaders that we work with to make sure that they understand what we're doing and how the program is going to have a good impact on our youth. Unfortunately, there's always some people who just reject that information out of hand. And so we just have to continue working with our champions and supporting them in all their efforts and making sure that we continue to move the ball forward. And having fighting that misinformation, like dealing with that spin, must feel like not something you really want to deal with, but on some level you kind of have to do that a little bit. Yeah, I think part of it is, I think we see that really as our job. It's really part of educating the public, educating our legislators, giving them the facts, actually. So with respect to sex education, we know that teen pregnancy across America and certainly here in Hawaii has dropped and part of the reason why it's dropped is because of good sex education and access to contraceptives. So the more facts we have for folks, and again, here in Hawaii we are so fortunate we have so many great champions, we are able to move forward really great public policy. And one of the things that's so exciting about working here in this state is that the progressive things that we can do here, we can send across to America, to the other states to say, you know what, we don't have to be sort of stuck here in a different zone, if you will. We can actually move forward. We can actually make great progress. And so it's really exciting to be here in the sex education effort we've done is just one of those examples. We're very excited to be in Hawaii as a merged mainland and Hawaii organization because Hawaii is fantastic and we love the leadership that we think can happen in Hawaii that can pioneer many of the sort of public policies and things that we've dreamed about having and then move them across the western U.S. first and then to the northeast eventually where everything ends up. Well, I love the idea of Hawaii being on the vanguard, but we sort of have to be. We don't have the luxury of going to Mexico or Canada for healthcare that is not available, you know? But Hawaii has never had to. Hawaii has always been on the vanguard of women's health and we are so proud to be here working to even advance that. There was never any doubt when Roe v. Wade, even before Roe v. Wade happened, the people of Hawaii were standing firm that people had the individual right to choose and passed laws accordingly and you all have a legacy that is very impressive and that the rest of us can learn from. Well, we learned the hard way like everybody else. I mean, not far from where we're sitting now a hundred years ago, not even that long ago. 60 years ago there were, you know, when it wasn't legal to have abortions, that this is where people came in Chinatown and lots of very tragic stories. But thank God we don't have to deal with that now and whether it's condoms or cancer screening, we do have Planned Parenthood and not only on Oahu. That's right. We have a health center in Maui. We have educators in Kauai and the big islands as well as Maui and Oahu and we're really proud to be in expansion mode in our hundredth year. Not only are we working to increase our footprint in terms of medical services and educational services, adding things like peer education groups, what we call teen council which is very exciting, groups of young people that sort of fan out. We always say it's wonderful that if kids are going to get their sex ed from the street corner then by God we're going to be sure that street corner knows what they're talking about. But not only that, we have our team working very hard on public policies that embrace all of this so that we can keep all of this moving and finance it for people without the means and just basically make things better and better for the populace here. Well, we'll take this moment to take a break and hear about some of the other think tech shows and be right back. Hello, my name is Crystal. Let me tell you, my talk show, I'm all about health. It's healthy to talk about sex. It's healthy to talk about things that people don't talk about. It's healthy to discuss things that you think are unhealthy because you need to talk about it. So I welcome you to watch Quok Talk and engage in some provocative discussions on things that do relate to healthy issues and have a well-balanced attitude in life. Join me. Hey, how are you doing? Welcome to Abachi Talk. My name is Andrew Lening. I'm your co-host and we have a nice program here every Friday at 1 o'clock Think Tech Studios where we talk about technology and we have a little bit of fun with it. So join us if you can. Thanks. Hello, I'm Marion Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kaui Lucas and with me here today are three amazing women warriors for Planned Parenthood. I have Chris Chervino, I have Elaine Rose, and I have Laurie Field. And I met these three incredible Wahine this past Wednesday and part of the 100-year celebration of Planned Parenthood and got to learn about a fantastic tool you guys have. The app, right? Who's going to talk about that? I am. We were trying to figure out how do we, since we are responsible for Alaska, we're responsible for Hawaii, how do we serve people in really geographically diverse areas where they can't necessarily just hop in a car and come to a health center. So we've put together an app, a telemedicine app called Planned Parenthood Care so that people could interface with us from their telephones or their tablets or their desktops wherever they might happen to be in any of the four states that Planned Parenthood, the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands serves. And so when one goes to the either Android or the Apple Store, you download Planned Parenthood Care, the app, you click on it and our health center clinician will come up and speak to you. You can get birth control, you can have a sexually transmitted disease screening by which we mean you will have a conversation. I want to be clear about that. You don't have to take pictures of anything. Have a conversation with the clinician and then we will drop ship you a kit home. If the conversation is about birth control, we will drop ship your birth control home and we have the ability to bill your insurance. We have arrangements with most of the Hawaii insurers so that, you know, all of that can be covered in the normal course of healthcare but we feel like we wanted to be able to be sure that even if people can't get to us we can interface with you. You can be part of Planned Parenthood. I was so excited about this because, you know, if you've ever lived on one of the neighbor islands things can be really tough. And so I downloaded your app and now we're seeing it and it's like, wow, yeah. I can sign up for an appointment and talk to somebody and there's her real name and her picture and she's real and she looks really friendly and she's talking to it. You get more questions answered that way than you probably ever have in any appointment you've ever had but we were very pleased that when we first launched it a very first person who took advantage of it was a woman on Molokai felt that this was an ideal way and she was like, no way, this is the best ever. When we launched in Hawaii we were serving a woman up above the Arctic Circle she was not only 500 miles away from the nearest town she was thousands of miles away from anything. And she was very pleased a few days later to have the bushplane come in and land with her birth control supplies. Wow. It's an innovation that we are thrilled is working away. We just want more people to know about it so thank you for having us on your show so we can tell people that that exists and it's possible. Well so not only do we have quite a good legislature well maybe because we have quite a good legislature you have been able to do some other exciting things this past year Lori. Yes, so as part of our 100th anniversary across the country it's also our 50th year anniversary in Hawaii as Planned Parenthood so we are very fortunate to have leaders in all levels of government including our Honolulu Mayor Kurt Caldwell who just recently illuminated Honolulu Hall for the entire week pink in celebration of Planned Parenthood's anniversary. Thank you Mr. Mayor. And also sent us a great letter of support and presented it to us bunch of staff and volunteers in a lovely ceremony at Honolulu Hall. So and this past legislative session you were able to do another or you we were able to get some a first right as far as a year's worth of. Yes we were we were able to pass the first bill in the country that requires that birth control be dispensed 12 months at a time and be covered under private insurance as well as Medicaid and it was the first time in the country had some variations across the country but no one has done it quite that way with no edge restrictions also. So important. So important. Instead of having to go to your pharmacist every month to get your pills refilled right. Any barrier that people don't have means that they will be able to use the contraceptive method more as it was intended by the science to use it. If we don't create a situation where someone has to run out and pick up another pack they weren't expecting to. Making getting pills or other contraception a hassle is a very bad idea. Right so it's this available for all no matter what your method is that this it's good for a year once your once your doctor has approved you for as long as it's a prescription. Yes prescription. Okay. So like for example an IUD you don't get a prescription for so it doesn't cover that. But that's also just installed. Inject injectables. We can only inject you know every every number of months just because that's how the dosing of that works and we don't hand somebody a package of needles or something. But generally the other methods the ones we can people can carry out and have at home that those are the ones primarily birth control pills. Right. That's what we're talking about. And other hormonal methods like patches and rings. Wow there's more out there than I knew about. It's a lot different than Margaret Sanger's day. Oh wow. Thankfully not the pickle vet. Yeah exactly. I am definitely going to leave today with that. So what's coming up next for Planned Parenthood in Hawaii? What are you looking at? What do you what do you what's really important now? Well we're very eager to have this election turn out in important ways people to pay attention to people who are interested in health care issues. We are in the process of a very large capital campaign. It's very much our hope to find and purchase a headquarters building here for Honolulu because we feel like we we want to be here in the next hundred years and so we want a real stake in the ground. We are expanding our teen council programs on the various islands and we're looking for people who want to invest in those to start them up. So a great deal going on obviously we want our app to grow. So call you know click in call us up and we'd be happy to serve you. Wow that's big. Buying a building. Wow. Okay. But how exciting. Oh it's very exciting. And how does how would one if one were interested in supporting the peer group development how how would that how would that happen? If people are interested in becoming donors to Planned Parenthoods for specific things or in general you can contact us at the information that's I think supplied here at the end of the show credits. Yes absolutely. We'd be delighted to talk to you. Okay. So people don't often think of Planned Parenthoods work as being sustainability oriented but very much so it is and I just wanted to recently we had as part of a lecture series here Eric Esidurian in town and he put up a poster of the six most important things to really carry us through climate change and so forth. Great. And I was very interested to see that having fewer children politically correctly stated was was number two on the list actually and I'm wondering whether that conversation is happening in your world since you deal with this every day kind of are people making those connections between. Oh most definitely people very much want to be able to manage the size of their families and the spacing of their children. People make different choices on how large they want their families to be but almost nobody says my goal is really a huge number of kids most people have something more manageable in mind. Our job is obviously to make everyone's individual choices possible for them but great many people like the support they get from a good contraceptive method so that they can make their own decisions as they go through their lives. And all of you have the most amazingly upbeat countenance given what you have to go through from time to time it's really I just get so much energy just being in the same room with you you're wonderful. You know I think what you're feeding off on from all of us is that we love what we do because we really believe that we are all in this together that we are all striving for a world in which women get to live up to their highest potentials and this is one way in which they get to do it by taking care of their health and yeah so I think that's why. We don't get beaten down by what's going on out there and Hawaii is a beautiful example of why the work that we do pays off and certainly the work we do out there and we're growing it here on Hawaii is working with volunteers and educating folks about what we do here what happens in their legislature what happens in their local governments so that they can become engaged and also empowered. So I was reading about that your peer groups have won awards actually for being super effective. They are super effective. And do we have any good stories about how that actually works? It's really tremendous. What we do is we pick sort of the natural leaders out of the various schools and we're beginning this on Honolulu we have our first cohort of teen council teenagers getting together right now and we take them through an extensive training program so that they are capable of talking to people about what it is that they've learned and we also do a big slice of teen theater skills. So they act out these scenarios in front of their colleagues which is so important a lot of young people don't realize the incredible importance of respectful communication what might be a flag for someone that a relationship might be veering into abusive a lot of people don't have role models at home that might help them understand now you're in kind of a danger zone. What should women insist on in terms of how they're treated? How do we ensure that children aren't bullied at school? How do we make sure that young people don't anesthetize themselves with drug and alcohol about experiences that are new to them that they're nervous about? How can a young person refuse to do something they're not yet comfortable with doing without feeling like the last geek on the planet? What kind of skills can we impart to someone so that they feel empowered by talking about what it is they want rather than victimized by it? And so all of those skills are what we try to bring along in these teen councils and they are absolutely tremendous. And not only that, we have these teenagers go once a year into the legislatures when they're developed in order to lobby for their own interests. And you can talk, Elaine, about what that experience is. They are incredibly powerful. We always hear back from legislators that that was the most impressive, you know, 15 minutes they'd had, very long time because these young people are so educated and they understand what they're talking about and what they're telling these legislators about. And so I know Lori is super excited because we're just starting this new teen council here. Oh, okay. I want to make sure that I'm watching that on the monitor when the first cohort of Planned Parenthood graduates, do you think it'll be in time for next? Well, we'll probably take them to the next legislator. I'm sure. On what we would call our teen lobby day. We're most certainly invited. We have had the young people explain their world to legislators and the legislators' eyes are opened. The scales fall from their eyes. Well, thank you so much, ladies, for coming down to talk to us. And here's to the next 100 years.