Each year in the United States, app...

Each year in the United States, approximately 1 million adolescents, or 10 percent of females 15 to 19 years of age, become pregnant. (1) These pregnancies, which account for 13 percent of all births, usually are unintended and arise outside of marriage. (2) Since 1991 the adolescent pregnancy rate in the United States has fallen on 25 percent, from 116 to 87 for 1,000 females 15 to 19 years of age. (3) This decline has been attributed to delayed initiation of sexual intercourse, increased use of contraception, and education about human immunodeficiency virus transmission and pregnancy prevention. (45) Despite the decline, adolescent pregnancy remains a major public health puzzle with lasting repercussions.

In 2001 the U Surgeon General at handed "The Surgeon General's Call to Action to raise Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior," (6) which discussed the ne for a national dialogue upon this topic, expanding research into sexual health, and improving health care access and social interventions to increase responsible sexual behaviors.

Impact of Teenage Pregnancy

Compared with nonpregnant adolescents, teenage mothers are les likely to graduate from high gymnasium and are more likely to score below average in language and reading skills. (78) These teenagers also are more likely to have cheap self-esteem and symptoms of depression. (910) Many of them have behavior and substance-abuse question at issues and lack the resources to abundantly foster the emotional development and enrichment of their children's lives. (11-13)

Children of adolescent mothers are at greater risk of preterm birth, cheap birth weight, child abuse, failure poverty, and death. (14-17) They are more likely to have behavior disorders and difficulties in institute and to engage in substance abuse. (1819) In 1996 the neediness rate among children born to teenage mothers was 42 percent twice that of the overall rate in children. (20) The infant mortality rate (i.e., deaths in infants younger than the same year per 1,000 live births) is higher in children of teenage mothers than in other children. (21)

All Americans are affected by dint of adolescent pregnancy. The Annie E Casey Foundation (22) reports that more than 75 percent of teenage mothers receive public assistance within five years of delivering their first child. The societal richness of caring for these mothers and their children, including medical expenditures food and housing support, engagement training, and foster care, is estimated at $7 billion by year. (20)

Strategies for Prevention

Many prevention programs are designed to lessen the number of adolescent pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the United States. In general, these programs aim to improve the use of contraception and to modify the high-risk behaviors associated with teenage pregnancy and STDs

YOUTH SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Youth social disclosure programs target social and psychologic skills that are necessary to avoid high-risk behaviors as it is as early sexual activity. These programs operate onward the premise that adolescents who delay sexual activity have high educational aspirations, fellows with similar norms, and parent-child relationships characterized according to supervision, support, and open communication. (23)

The Seattle Social exhibition Project (24) is a program designed to increase students' social skills and attachment to denomination and family. Eighteen elementary indoctrinates were assigned to receive intensive training or the usual education curriculum. In the intensive training arm, teachers and parents received annual training in proactive classroom management, problem-solving skills, child behavior management, and unsalable article use prevention in adolescents. The intervention did not include sex education.

Follow-up of 93 percent of the 349 participants at 21 years showed that scholars in the intervention group had their first sexual experience later than bookish mans in the control group (163 years versus 158 years; P < 05) fewer lifetime sex partners (36 versus 41; P < 05) and fewer pregnancies (38 percent versus 56 percent; P < 05) These differences were greater in black and female participants.

In the Children's Aid Society-Carrera Program, (25) 600 disadvantaged just discovered York City adolescents 13 to 15 years of age were assigned randomly to a typical after-school program or united with a comprehensive youth progress to maturity curriculum. Follow-up of 79 percent of participants at three years showed that the girls in the intervention clump had lower odds of being sexually active (odd ratio [OR], 05; P < 05) and of having been pregnant (OR, 03; P < 05) Participation in the program had no impact in succession boys' sexual and reproductive behavior.

The Teen Outreach Program (TOP), (26) another social progression in a continuously ascending gradation program, focuses on volunteer activities. In single evaluation of TOP, 695 high teach students from diverse backgrounds were randomized by means of classroom to TOP or no intervention. Program participants had lower self-reported rates of teen pregnancy, indoctrinate failure, course failure, and sect suspension at one year. The program's succes might be a ensue of mentorship as well as increasing self-sufficiency through volunteerism.