North Central Health District

May is Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month

Posted May 2, 2016 by NCHD Admin

Written By: Valerie Hicks

 

May is Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month

 

May 2016 is Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month and Wednesday, May 4, 2016 is National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Day in the United States.  Celebration is appropriate around the country as teen pregnancy and birth rates continue to decline significantly.  Among 15-19 year olds, teen birth rates decreased by 9% between 2013-2014. This equates to a birth rate of 24.2 per 1000 girls.  This is a historic low for U.S. teens in this age group. Birth rates for girls ages 15-17 dropped 11% between 2013-2014.  Kudos to those teenagers who decided that their education, health, career and future family were more important than momentary pleasure.  Intentional decisions were made by these intelligent teens to practice abstinence, delay sexual activity and/or correctly use effective contraceptives.

It is also appropriate to congratulate and thank those thousands of adults nation-wide who are health educators, mentors, father-figures, mother-figures, clinicians, after school & summer camp program teachers, tutors and even political leaders.  These adults teach abstinence curricula, comprehensive sex education curricula, vote to allocate federal funding for various sex education programs & research, counsel students on how to make healthy decisions, listen, and most importantly, teach teens how to set & pursue goals and value themselves.

In the North Central Health District, we continue to search and seize every opportunity to prevent teen pregnancy by increasing teens’ knowledge & skills and changing attitudes through curriculum-based sex education, parent sessions, school assemblies, and referral for family planning clinical services at our local health departments in 13 counties.   The state of Georgia’s birth rate for 15-19 year olds for 2014 was 28.3 while the North Central Health District’s (13 counties) birth rates for 15-19 year olds in 2014 was 34.6 per 1000 girls. These numbers indicate we still have a lot of work to do.

When teen pregnancy & birth rates go down, opportunities go up for teens. Stay tune as we “turn up” our efforts to prevent and reduce teen pregnancy.

For information, please contact the North Central Health District’s
Office of Adolescent Health & Youth Development, (478) 751-4009.