AMP it up!

After a remarkable pilot year in 2010, the Art and Global Health Center at UCLA expanded the AMP it up! program to reach eleven Los Angeles high schools in 2011, offering them a menu of creative options that bring exciting, arts-based HIV prevention and sexual health education into high school health classrooms.

For year two of the program, the AIDS Performance Team came back, but with a new name: The UCLA Sex-Ed Squad. The group is currently on tour with their show The BLEEP They Should Have Told Us, which teaches teens about HIV, safe sex, LGBTQ bullying, women's empowerment, and more!
The AMP in AMP it up! stands for Arts-based, Multiple-intervention, Peer education.

The project is Arts-based, because artists are expert communicators who can inspire and mobilize youth. There are Multiple-interventions, in order to have a lasting impact. And finally, Peer educators are employed so that teens can learn from someone who can easily relate to the situations they are presented with on a daily basis.

In early 2010, The Art and Global Health Center at UCLA and cooperating partners took the AMP it up! program to participating high schools and youth community centers throughout South and East Los Angeles for the first time. The program resulted in an incredible increase in sexual health awareness by students and even a shift in behavior. A study found more than a three-fold increase, 14% to 59%, in sexually active students who had taken an HIV test during our intervention.

AMP It Up!’s new model for community-based sexual health education affirms human sexuality while memorably informing teenagers about STI/HIV prevention and sexual health with a four-part program in each school.



1. UCLA Sex-Ed Squad Workshop- Through the use of skits and role-plays, UCLA students teach high school students how to use condoms and how to negotiate condom use with a potential partner.

2. Positively Speaking: HIV-positive individuals share their personal stories of what its like to live with HIV, reducing stigma against people living with the virus.

3. UCLA Sex-Ed Squad Performance: UCLA students use humor, the performing arts and honest, personal stories in a 45-minute performance, followed by a 15-minute discussion to educate high school students about sexual health.

4. Arts-based Curriculum for Health Teachers: By way of a WAC class taught by Janna Shadduck-Hernandez in the Spring of 2011, UCLA students will create an arts-based sexual health advocacy curriculum that will be accessible for high school health teachers in the classroom. Students will also have the opportunity to produce and facilitate an LAUSD conference for high school leadership students to learn how to act as “foot soldiers” in his or her high school for the topic of sexual health awareness, HIV prevention and condom use.

For more information on the AMP It Up! program, please contact Lauren Gould at lgould@arts.ucla.edu.

The Origins of The UCLA Sex-Ed Squad: In the first year of the program, UCLA students took performance pieces created in a workshop with South African artist Pieter-Dirk Uys and the Art and Global Health Center’s 48 Hours to Action performance, and created a new piece called When the Situation Gets Slippery especially for AMP it Up! The show dealt with teen sexuality. Performances are followed by peer-directed discussion. To see photos of that first team in action, check out the web album at http://s843.photobucket.com/albums/zz360/Art_Global_Health_Center/Amp%20....