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NCNN Anchor Receives Community Awareness for Series on Teen Pregnancy |
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NCNN Anchor Kara Lusk received the 2002 Community Awareness Award.
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The Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Coalition of North Carolina (APPCNC) has awarded NCNN Anchor Kara Lusk with its 2002 Community Awareness Award. The award presentation took place at a luncheon on Thursday, May 9, 2002, at the Hawthorne Inn in Winston-Salem.
The Community Awareness Award is presented to an individual who has made an exceptional contribution to building public understanding of adolescent pregnancy prevention in North Carolina.
Lusk received the honor for a ten-part news series she put together looking at the issues of teen pregnancy. The first half of the series looked at the problem of teen pregnancy in North Carolina, and the second part looked at prevention efforts. Our state has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the country and has the highest rate among Hispanic girls.
Lusk focused on programs such as teens educating other teens and other successful programs.
“I had put together five general assignment stories on teen pregnancy, so I became interested in the issue, and I saw what a serious problem teen pregnancy is,” explained Lusk. “I wanted to raise awareness and show others how bad the problem is.”
The series aired for a week through NCNN and reran on Saturday. Requests started coming in from other stations to feature the pieces again, and even the APPNC itself received requests for the series from sister organizations. In fact, at the awards ceremony an Orange County judge requested a transcript of the program to play for the teens with whom he comes into contact through his work.
The APPCNC said that her series will go a long way towards educating listeners about the gravity of the problem.
Lusk also hopes that her series will focus attention on the need to help the organizations that help try to prevent teen pregnancy and help those who are pregnant. The APPCNC may lose all of their state funding because of the current budget crisis. Through her research Lusk found that would basically gut the organization.
Lusk said, “I know my series probably won’t solve the problem of teen pregnancy in North Carolina, but if I can reach just one teen, who might be thinking of becoming sexually active — to reconsider his or her actions. Or if I could reach just one adult, and he or she decides to volunteer with a teen pregnancy prevention program or become a better mentor to the teens in their lives… then the series will have accomplished something.”
