CLINIC COMBATS TEEN PREGNANCY.

Byline: Steven J. Gorman Daily News Staff Writer

Nicole Dreicer, 16, is paid to counsel teen-age peers on birth control and the consequences of sexual activity.

``A lot of girls will have sex because of peer pressure,'' Dreicer said Friday at the Valley Community Clinic. ``Here, we educate our clients on how to get out of that situation. Instead of saying, `It's your fault, you're such a bad person,' we educate them on how they can do something better.''

To the associate director of the clinic, Diane Chamberlain, the success of the peer counseling program is reflected in new government figures showing four straight years of declining pregnancy rates among teen-age girls.

``I think there has been a great effort across California to educate teens, to make services readily available to teens. I'm very pleased,'' she said. ``We've worked very hard for this.''

The peer counseling program at the North Hollywood clinic was started with state funding in 1992 as a demonstration project under Gov. Pete Wilson's teen pregnancy prevention initiative.

The state ended the project in 1995, but the $240,000 a year program has continued since then with support from private foundations, and is being replicated in four other clinics statewide through a grant from the California Wellness Foundation, Chamberlain said.

Under the program, teen-agers can schedule appointments to see health educators their own age for counseling on contraception and the avoidance of risky sexual behavior.

The counselors also are trained to chronicle medical and sexual histories of their clients and prepare them for physical examinations.

``The focus is on teens helping teens, that's what it's all about,'' Dreicer said Friday at the clinic. ``It's like, `Oh, my God! You're my age and you know all this stuff. . . . So anybody can learn it.'' '

A crucial element to the success of any counseling program is reaching teen-agers early, Chamberlain said.

``Historically, teens will be sexually active for several months before they ever get to a clinic, and when they do it's for a pregnancy scare,'' she said. ``We'd like to get them into a clinic much earlier to avoid a pregnancy.''

Chamberlain said encouraging sexual abstinence is an important message for teens to hear, but access to contraception and information on how to correctly use it is just as vital.

``Realistically, we have to realize that many teens choose to be sexually active. But many chose abstinence, and that needs to be supported also,'' she said.

Stephanie Volk, director of Woman to Woman, a coalition of volunteers from different professions who work with young women at risk, said building self-esteem and encouraging teen-agers to set goals are key ingredients in reducing teen-age pregnancy.

``A lot of it is a cycle,'' Volk said. ``A lot of young women come from homes where their parents were young. . . . A lot of young women become pregnant so they have somebody in return to love.''

One form of birth control that has become particularly popular with teen-age clients at the Valley Community Clinic is Depo-Provera, a contraceptive injection administered every three months, Chamberlain said.

``It's very effective, you don't have to think about it,'' she said.