Statewide Chair Mary McLellan Heritage Community Services Regional Chairs Mariscia Cooper (Pee Dee) Charlie Lybrand (Lowcountry) Lenna Neill (Upstate) Rev. Randy Riddle (Grand Strand) Dr. Roger Rollins (CSRA) Charlotte Valentine-Green (Ace Basin)   Advisory Council Eugene Bacote Darlington School District Dr. Vera Bailey Hilton Head Preg. Care Center Pamela Berry Colleton Fire and Rescue Dr. Vonda Calcutt Lowcountry Ctr. Diabetes Sen. Chip Campsen Charleston/Berkeley Rev. Chuck Coward Charleston Outreach Robin Crosby Colleton County Ligure Ellington Ret.Capt. Charleston City Police Dr. Randy Goings Chiropractic Physician Faye Hill Lowcountry Pregnancy Center & SC Association Pregnancy Care Centers WC Hoecke Fatherhood Practioner Leroy Lewis Upward Bound at Cof C Norman L. Moore, Jr. Colonel, USAFR(Ret) Cyndi Mosteller Comm. for Higher Education Alexia Newman Carolina Pregnancy Center Fred Payne Marriage Savers of Upstate Jerry & Barbara Seymour R& R Marriage Min. Ronald Shoupe Colleton County Dr. A. V. Strong A Better Way, Inc. (Gang Out) Dr. Robert Thomas Pulmonary Medicine Pastor Phil Thrailkill St. Luke UMC Hartsville Kelly Walker Upstate Fatherhood Coalition	January 15, 2010 SC Healthy Family Formation Coalition E-News!   Charleston Health Fair: January 23rd & 24th Heritage Keepers will be one of 60+ providers, businesses and non-profits at the Total Health Fair in Mt. Pleasant, SC.  Stop by and talk to the Heritage Keepers Life Skills educators!   It’s time for a New Year and a Healthier You!  Charleston’s premier healthcare providers and wellness based businesses have joined forces to create Total Health Fair, a health based initiative for the Charleston area.  Total Health Fair will increase awareness of all forms of healthcare and healthy living opportunities that are available to all residents of the low country.  Visit CharlestonHealthFair.com or call 843-402-0310.     SCHFF Coalition Grows! The E-News now reaches over 3,000 members and most are parents!  Parents have the greatest influence on their children’s decisions plus they care more about their future than any organization or agency ever could.    For the Coalition, Healthy Family Formation is not about fighting contraception education.  It is about promoting a life sequence that works and teaching the Life Skills young people need to best achieve it.     Family Formation Matters The ways we form our families, matters.  Research has proven that the Family Formation that produces the best psychological and behavioral results includes two married biological parents that are authoritative, nurturing and have set high standards for their children. (Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-Six Conclusions from the Social Sciences, and Hardwired to Connect.)     Get an education, Get a job, and then Start your family.     Nothing new, but it is profound. This ideal sequence makes it easier for children and their parents to succeed at life.  Our society suffers because too many of us get it backwards.  We carelessly slide in and out of relationships rather than making thoughtful decisions about the consequences.  (Read more about Sliding vs. Deciding and Oxytocin, a chemical of trust, bonding and social connection.)   At the core of Healthy Family Formation is the understanding that sex is best within a mutually monogamous life-long relationship, such as marriage.  Without educating (and sometimes re-educating) each generation about how to achieve and perpetuate this ideal life sequence, they will get it backwards.    In Marriage and Caste in America, author Kay Hymowitz explains that when we as a society separate sex, marriage and childbearing the result is chaos and entrenched multigenerational poverty.  A type of economic caste system develops between the married families and the unmarried families.  The haves and the have-nots!     SC, Digging a Deeper Hole? Governor Sanford and Legislators are searching for $530 million to cut from the state budget.  And once again, the Governor has slashed funding for teen pregnancy prevention programs (comprehensive and abstinence) in his Executive Budget. The Governor’s mark-up reads:   “this activity [teen pregnancy prevention] has been ranked as a low priority…”   Low priority?     Since 1996, when Heritage educators began teaching in South Carolina middle and high schools, there has been a 35% drop in pregnancy rates for 15-17 year-olds. (SC-DHEC Biostatistics, 2005)   Rigorous independent evaluations on the Heritage program reveal that a year later, students receiving the program were half as likely to initiate sexual activity as those students not receiving the program.   Even with the 35% drop in teen pregnancies, the taxpayers still spend  $469 million each and every year to subsidize the consequences of out-of-wedlock childbirth and divorce.   Sixty-two percent of families in poverty are from single parent households, and, the National Fatherhood Initiative reports that “father absence is a factor in child abuse, teen pregnancy, crime and incarceration.”     Can South Carolina really afford for teen pregnancy rates to increase 35%?       “Whether it is education, crime, or poverty, there are huge differences between single parent families and two-parent families.  Even race doesn’t make as much difference in outcomes.  The poverty rate among black married couples is in single digits.  The infant mortality rate among black married women with only a high school diploma is lower than the infant mortality rate among white unmarried women who have been to college…   We need to stop pretending that it makes no difference when all the facts show that it makes a huge difference, from poverty to matters of life and death.”   Thomas Sowell, PhD in Economics Syndicated Columnist       Contact SCHFF for more information about Healthy Family Formation and Heritage Keepers!   Follow the SC-HFF Coalition on Twitter! 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	The South Carolina Healthy Family Formation Coalition (SC HFF Coalition) is organized and staffed by Heritage Community Services. The SC HFF Coalition promotes child and family well-being by providing opportunities for statewide communication about such issues as: adolescent pregnancy, unwed childbearing, fatherlessness, sexual exploitation of our youth, dating violence and domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, gang activity and youth violence.    Coalition members support healthy family formation initiatives that integrate character-based life skills, teen pregnancy prevention with an emphasis on abstinence-centered education, and the importance of fidelity-within-marriage.