September 2, 2009

Media Stories

Abstinence Education = Fewer Abortions
National Catholic Register, August 21, 2009

Are Churches Undermining the Abstinence Message?
TownHall.com, August 20, 2009

Teen Births Target of Volunteer Program
Battle Creek Enquirer (MI), August 18, 2009

Poor Chicago Kids Have Sex at Young Age
Chicago Sun-Times, August 19, 2009

Focus: Abstinence Program Alive in Schools Despite Funding Cuts
WKYC.com, August 18, 2009

Teens Have Less Sex After Middle-School Program
Health Behavior News Service, August 17, 2009

Ten Reasons to Keep Abstinence Education in N.C.
Family North Carolina Magazine, Jul/Aug 2009

Youth Spotlight Thomas Askew Thomas Askew’s mom was so worried that he would wind up in jail or worse, so she moved him to Arkansas. There in the 8th grade, an encounter with mentors from Just Say Yes, a national character-building program, changed everything. Hear him describe in this YouTube video what a difference abstinence education made in his life. The National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth is pleased to present a new series featuring youth champions of abstinence education. In the coming weeks, we'll offer profiles of young people who have not only made the decision to wait but have also been through and volunteered in abstinence education programs around the country— empowering other teens to make the same choice. If you have outstanding teens in your program, let us know about them. E-mail: dbertrand@ncfy.com.

Recent Research

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy recently released two new publications in its Science Says series. The series is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded "Putting What Works to Work" project, which identifies and consolidates research-based practices that prevent teen pregnancy, translates this research into user-friendly materials, and works directly with states and communities to incorporate such practices into their work.

1. American Indian/ Alaska Native Youth and Teen Pregnancy Prevention (Science Says #39, August 2009) focuses on teen childbearing among Native American youth and includes information about sexual and contraceptive behavior, attitudes about sex and reproductive health, and information about potential programs for this population. The authors note that the birth rate among Alaskan Indian/Alaska Native teen girls increased 12% between 2005 and 2007—more than twice the national increase.
   
   
2. Unplanned Pregnancy as it Relates to Women, Men, Children, and Society (Science Says #40, August 2009) provides a summary of unplanned pregnancy in the United States as reported by both women and men, along with details about the consequences associated with unplanned pregnancy and what the American public thinks about the issue.

KIDS COUNT Indicator Brief: Reducing the Teen Birth Rate (July 2009) is a recent installment in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT Indicator Briefs series. The series summarizes research related to each of the 10 indicators used in the KIDS COUNT annual data book. This indicator brief describes six strategies that can contribute to preventing teen pregnancy, including: (1) intensifying the focus on underlying causes; (2) helping parents succeed in their role as sex educators; (3) broadening the scope of pregnancy prevention efforts; (4) helping adults provide accurate, clear and consistent information about how to reduce risk-taking behaviors; (5) creating community-wide action plans for teen pregnancy prevention; and (6) giving young people a credible vision of a positive future.

Nearly 1,000 young adolescents (age 10-14 at start) from Boston, San Francisco, and Chicago were interviewed in a longitudinal study that assessed what factors put them at risk for early sexual activity and what factors protect them from it. A Bioecological Analysis of Risk And Protective Factors Associated with Early Sexual Intercourse of Young Adolescents  is in press and will appear in an upcoming issue of Children and Youth Services Review. The authors said periods of instability in family structure and welfare use were risk factors for early sexual activity, but having a mother with education beyond high school and having an involved father delayed it.  Because boys had sex much earlier and had more sexual experiences than girls, the study recommends more gender-specific prevention programs that are implemented at earlier ages, especially among high-risk populations.

Go to the NCFY literature database for abstracts of these and other publications. Publications discussed here do not necessarily reflect the views of NCFY, the Family and Youth Services Bureau, or the Administration for Children and Families.

Know Your CBAE Contractors

Many of you have expressed confusion about the organizations that work with the Family and Youth Services Bureau to deliver CBAE training, technical assistance, and other resources. Over the past several weeks, we’ve used this space to present descriptive summaries of those organizations, how they serve grantees, and how to contact them. Here are the links to their descriptions in past issues in case you missed them.

Quote of the Day

"Very few efforts to improve education for at-risk students, prevent child abuse, increase labor-market participation, or reduce teenage pregnancy or homelessness succeed by applying a single, bounded intervention. They depend on community capacity to take elements that have worked somewhere already, adapt them, and reconfigure them with other strategies emerging from research, experience, and theory to make a coherent whole."

(Lisbeth B. Schorr, senior fellow, Center for the Study of Social Policy, Washington, writes in an Education Week commentary, “Innovative Reforms Require Innovative Scorekeeping” August 25, 2009)

Address Change

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