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Project Prepare gynecological teaching associates (GTAs) have instructed over 12,000 future doctors at Bay Area universities, including Stanford University, University of California at San Francisco and Touro University, how to perform sensitive and effective breast and pelvic examinations. Below, discover the diversity and breadth of our personal and professional accomplishments and impressions of our work in our own words.
Kat Wentworth~ Michele Burke~Dannielle McClintock~Judy Gaer~
Molly Kenefick~Laura M. Perez~Dorrie Lane~Sonya Trejo~Nancy Finkle~
Teresa Ellis~Kristy Lin Billuni~Esther Wang~Sueann Mark
Kat Wentworth (kat@projectprepare.org) has been the Director of Project Prepare since 2001, and has been a Gynecological Teaching Associate since 1999. She also works as an administrator for the Carcinogenic Potency Project at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. She has a BA in World Literature and Cultural Studies with an emphasis on gender, sexuality and health. Kat's history of health advocacy and education includes volunteering for the San Francisco Sex Information hotline, pre-HIV test counseling at the San Joaquin County AIDS Project and outreach for the Santa Cruz Needle Exchange. She also spent two years of work in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with adolescent girls involved in prostitution. She is currently on the Speaker's Bureau for Community United Against Violence (CUAV) and is completing a certification program in Lactation Education through UCLA Extension.
"I found out about the program from a childhood friend who was a medical student at UCSF. One day, she called and said: "Kat, today I had the most amazing experience of my educational career!" Little did I know how much this would change my life. The challenge of being a GTA heightens my awareness of my body as well as my self-esteem, courage and communication skills. Becoming the director of Project Prepare has shaped my vision of how I can work together with others to impact significant change in women's health care."
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Michele Burke has been a Gynecological Teaching Associate since 1992. She is an Adult Nurse Practitioner, who works in general internal medicine and psychiatry. She started working as a gynecological teaching associate long before becoming a Nurse Practitioner, and thus has the perspective of both patient educator and clinician. The experience of teaching medical students about women's health care, as well as her work in the field of public health, motivated her to enter the field of health care as a clinician.
"I became a gynecological teaching associate because of my commitment to and passion for progressive approaches to women's health care. The work is challenging and fun. Even now, many years later, I still feel thrilled and rewarded to look at the face of a student who is seeing their first view of a cervix -- my cervix! It must be a primal experience to see, for the first time -- the small entry or exit that almost all of us have traversed. I see, too, that students are profoundly affected by the experience of learning to examine the body of a woman who is an expert on her own body. The student learns not only the fine points of conducting a pelvic exam, but also learns that women can feel empowered in and by their bodies. I think that is the most important contribution we make."
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Dannielle McClintock has been a Gynecological Teaching Associate since 1993. She has a BA in Humanities and a Doctor of Chiropractic degree. At other times in her life she has done HIV education for women, youth group leadership and coordination, media relations, and video production. Currently, she is a chiropractor in private practice.
"I love being a GTA because I know I am making a difference. The students are always grateful and relieved to know that they can competently and comfortably perform the exam, and I know that that translates into thousands of women having more positive and empowering experiences when visiting their doctor."
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Judy Gaer has been a Gynecological Teaching Associate since 1994. Her day job is working as a Nurse Practitioner for the Health Department of the City and County of San Francisco at City Clinic (their sexually transmitted disease clinic). She has a Masters degree in Nursing and a Nurse Practitioner certificate. She is also the mom of 2 fabulous boys and is a former volunteer at San Francisco Sex Information.
"The reason I want to keep doing this teaching is seeing the faces of the students when they are able to palpate my uterus or ovary. The excitement of actually putting what they learn into practice on a real person is a wonderful thing to watch. I often have a chance to work with medical students from UCSF again as a preceptor when they are on rotation at City Clinic. When I ask them about the their experience with Project Prepare GTAs, the answer is almost universally, "that was the best learning experience of my career."
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Molly Kenefick has been a GTA since 1994 and a writer and feminist for far longer. Her fiction and essays have been published in various anthologies and literary journals; she has written about being a GTA in the book That Takes Ovaries: Bold Females and Their Brazen Acts and for Bitch magazine. Molly rode her bicycle across the USA doing AIDS education and raising money for AIDS research; she's been a volunteer for the San Francisco Sex Information Line, and she founded and ran Passion Press, an erotic audio publishing company that puts a premium on women's pleasure. She mostly pays the mortgage writing and editing in a variety of settings. Molly studied writing and economics at Sarah Lawrence College. She likes bad jokes and big dogs and she's never bored.
"As I'd hoped it would, undressing in front of strangers has made me more comfortable with my body. Now, when I take off my shirt and bra or my pants, I feel like a superhero! I'm not a "Perfect 10," just a healthy, strong woman, who is unashamed of her body. I feel students' admiration and respect, and I deserve it because I am doing important work for women and women's health. I treasure seeing that my teaching creates immediate positive changes in my students and knowing that it creates a positive ripple effect on their future patients. I love this job!"
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Laura M. Perez has been a Gynecological Teaching Associate since 1995. She spends most of her time in the field of women"s reproductive health: she is a counselor in a San Francisco abortion clinic; she has been a doula since 2000; she is a co-founder of EXHALE, the countryÕs first free and confidential post-abortion counseling talkline; she is also in the process of becoming a midwife.
"When I discovered the breast and pelvic educator program, I was stunned to learn that medical students werenÕt previously provided with the teaching experience we offer. It is still a satisfying experience to know that women everywhere will benefit from our work as educators. And itÕs never tiring to hear the unending appreciations of medical students, thanking us for our patience, our feedback and the use of our bodies and minds in their educational experience."
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Dorrie Lane has been a Gynecological Teaching Associate since 1995. The beginning of her advocacy for sex education and women's health, started in 1966, when she was put in solitary detention, at the convent of St. Mary Magdalen school for talking about menstruation with her peers. But that's another story. She created the Wondrous Vulva Puppet in 1993 and continues to sew each one, (around 4,000 now). The Wondrous Vulva Puppet not only inspired the creation of the Vagina Monologues, it is used around the world as a tool for education, STI - HIV and Pregnancy prevention, as well as a healing tool for victims of sexual abuse crimes. She believes in the importance of women sharing their experiences, knowledge and healing through storytelling, and founded Vulva University, an online, women's sexual health school in 1995.
"Being a GTA provides an enormous benefit to the next generation of physicians. By sharing a patient's P.O.V. students learn of the emotional connection to honor, empower, educate and heal their female patients and all the women in their lives. I'm very proud of our work!"
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Sonya Trejo has been a Gynecological Teaching Associate since 1998. She was answering phones for San Francisco Sex Information when Norma Wilcox, the founder of Project Prepare, called looking for new women to train as Teaching Associates. Sonya earned a BA in Creative Writing in 1996. Inspired by her work as GTA, she left her job as a software QA Engineer and returned to school to study Physiology.
"I feel that this is very important work. Many women still die of cervical cancer despite it being completely curable when caught in early stages by routine pap smears. Some women have not been educated about how important regular exams are, but some women are willing to risk death rather than endure a pelvic exam! I feel that my work as a GTA helps medical students become more skilled both in the practical techniques and communication needed to put a patient at ease during a pelvic or breast exam. Ultimately I hope this will lead to more skilled, gentle and respectful doctors who patients will be happy to return to on a regular basis."
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Nancy Finkle has been a Gynecological Teaching Associate since 1998. Nancy has also been a health and sex educator since 1982. The daughter of a nurse and a urologist, Nancy feels she has developed considerable skill in discussing highly personal information in a sensitive and focused manner naturally, organically, if you will. She has applied her communication skills in service of health and community-building in several settings: at the University of California, Berkeley, in rural Honduras as a Peace Corps Volunteer, in Washington, DC, and in the SF Bay Area. In addition to being a GTA, she works full time as an undergraduate academic adviser at UC Berkeley.
"I am honored to be among this group of women who act to transform and broaden the relations between real, diverse, proactive folks and health care providers. I sincerely believe that what we do helps doctors work more competently and more compassionately with and for their patients. This work furthers my "raison d'etre" which is education for social change. I am also blessed to be a part of a sisterhood that teaches me more and more about living well in this body, more about myself and others in the aging process, and allows me to be a community educator in a way that I truly love."
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Teresa Ellis has been a Gynecological Teaching Associate since 2000. An erotic dancer for 12 years,
Teresa then became a Sex Educator and is also trained as a Doula. Teresa presently is a real estate consultant in Oakland. She is the founder/artistic director of "Harlem Shake Burlesque", the award winning only African American Burlesque Troupe in the
country. Oh...she is also raising her son!
"The one thing that I really enjoy about being a GTA is that what I tell my students will be with them throughout their careers in medicine. So with that I really stress that compassion and non-judgment are the two most important things that they can give to their patients in addition to quality health care."
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Kristy Lin Billuni has been a GTA since Fall of 2000. She is a radical feminist queer activist who puts reproductive freedom and healthcare for all above all other issues. She lives with her wife Helen Lin who is a social worker at Continuum HIV Services. Kristy has worked with great organizations like Mid Oregon AIDS Support Services, the National Abortion Rights Action League, Vulva University, Make*A*Circus, San Francisco Sex Information and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. She also pursues interests in sex education, the sex industry and the way mainstream culture interacts with sex and gender.
"I love working as a GTA because I get a chance to participate in the way tomorrow's healthcare providers and their patients communicate about sexual health."
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Esther Wang has been a Gynecological Teaching Associate since 2002. She has worked as a sex educator for over 5 years, including 3 years at Good Vibrations, a worker-owned, women-owned sex toy cooperative. She has completed the San Francisco Sex Information course on counseling and communicating about human sexuality. An artist, Esther creates multi-media production glorifying the erotic power of full-figured women and women of color.
"I ADORE what I do as a GTA. Aside from getting a chance to positively influence the way practitioners relate to their patients, I also feel that it's important that health care students get to see me model what a woman who is informed about and comfortable with her body is like. I like to think that one or more of them will develop into the kind of practitioner who empowers their patients to inform themselves and stand up for their rights as patients. I think that one of the more important things that I do for my students is that I give them room to have feelings and reactions and I give them permission to not know."
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Sueann Mark has been a Gynecological Teaching Associate since 2000. Sueann is a certified clinical sexologist who specializes in teaching human sexuality to health professionals. She received her Ph.D. degree from the institute for advanced study of human sexuality. Sueann is currently the HIV program director at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
"Being a Gynecological Teaching Associate is very rewarding work for me. It affords me a unique opportunity to work one on one with medical students and give them the skills necessary to treat their future patients with compassion and respect."
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