Jerome Romero
For most of his career Jerome Romero has focused on helping individuals with disabilities. For the last fourteen years, he has done so as the New Mexico Statewide Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) Prevention Program Director. As Director, Romero has developed many FASD prevention activities and produced a number of public campaign slogans, accompanying public messages, and educational materials to educate women of child-bearing age on the dangers of drinking alcohol while pregnant.
Romero travels around New Mexico working with a wide variety of stakeholders, high school students, prenatal clinics, foster care organizations, and community health workers.
Seven years ago, Romero began workiing with the FASD Center for Excellence, where he generously, and successfully, shared his project ideas and materials with other FASD organizations throughout the United States.
While Romero says all of his work is rewarding, he says his most beneficial project has been his FASD peer-education project in which he works with high school girls who have been pregnant or are pregnant and are trying to finish high school. Through this mission he works to convey the FASD prevention message and teaches the girls to warn their peers on the effects of drinking alcohol while pregnant. “Through that process, not only do the peer trainers become educated on the importance of not drinking during pregnancy, but their message is then heard by many more high school students than I could ever reach personally” says Romero. “The message that is conveyed peer to peer carries a very special power.”
Romero is currently the Chairman of the National Association of State FASD Coordinators, a group under the FASD Center for Excellence. He also sits on the Center’s Expert Panel on FASD.
Romero says it’s his positive attitude, respect for all people, and willingness to help others that pushes him forward every day.
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