Kern teen birth rates ratchet up as prevention programs axed
| Saturday, Mar 20 2010 04:00 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Mar 20 2010 04:00 PM
EXAMPLES OF CUTS TO TEEN PREGNANCY PREVENTION AND INTERVENTION PROGRAMS IN KERN
Adolescent Sibling Pregnancy Prevention Program
Funding: State general funds and matching federal Title XIX
Description: Provided case management and support services to siblings of pregnant and parenting teens to prevent teen pregnancy and improvement school performance. Siblings of parenting teens are at high risk of pregnancy. Program served nearly 500 teens between 1997-2006. Only 49 teens became pregnant or caused a pregnancy.
Cuts: 2000 vs. 2010 funding: $305,660 / $0
Program eliminated in 2006. No new funding proposed.
Male Involvement Program
Funding: State general funds and matching federal Title XIX
Description: Teen pregnancy prevention program that focused on young at-risk males by providing education and group activities
2000 vs. 2010 funding: $86,500 / $0
Program eliminated in 2008. No new funding proposed.
Teen Smart Outreach Program
Funding: State general funds and matching federal Title XIX
Description: Teen pregnancy prevention program that linked high school teens to local resources including family planning, pregnancy testing, STD testing and treatment and counseling.
2000 vs. 2010 funding: $100,000 / $0
Program eliminated in 2008. No new funding proposed.
Information and Education
Funding: State general funds and matching federal Title XIX
Description: Provides middle and high school students with curriculum-based information
2000 vs. 2010 Funding: $150,000 / Unknown
Expected Cuts: Program was cut from $150,000 to $125,000 in July 2007 and cut again to $81,741 in July 2008. Education officials fear this program could be eliminated entirely in 2010.
Source: Clinica Sierra Vista
Images
Foothill High School freshman Merena Franco holds her life-like doll, Ryan Nathan, in Shannon Gregg's health class Friday afternoon. This is part of Clinica Sierra Vista's "Baby Think It Over" program. The students care for their babies, raising their awareness about how much attention babies require and helping to prevent teen births, the rate of which is very high in Kern County.
Barbara Gladden discusses teen pregnancy with students in a West High health education class.
A packed West High health education class listens to Barbara Gladden talk about the problems of teen pregnancy.
The unvarnished facts of life, Kern County-style, came rapid-fire in the crowded classroom at West High School.
“How many of you know that Kern has the highest teenage birth rate of any county in California?” Barbara Gladden asked the students.
As a family life and sex education specialist from Clinica Sierra Vista, Gladden spends much of her time travelling from campus to campus talking about the life-altering consequences of becoming sexually active too early in life.
Sexually-transmitted disease. Pregnancy. Poverty. Single motherhood. Failure to graduate high school.
These pitfalls and many more are hammered into the heads of teenagers by Gladden nearly every day. But for how much longer?
As a result of California’s epic budget crisis, several sex education and pregnancy prevention programs have already been cut — and more may be on the chopping block, said Norman Constantine, a clinical professor of public health at UC Berkeley and the senior scientist at the Oakland-based Public Health Institute.
Constantine and other supporters of targeted education efforts say the cuts couldn’t come at a worse time in Kern, which had the highest teen birth rate in California in 2008, even as births to teen moms dropped to a record low in the state as a whole.
CUTTING PROGRAMS THAT WORK?
Even FamilyPACT, a program developed by the state Office of Family Planning, is teetering near extinction, supporters say, even though the state receives a $9 federal match for every dollar invested in the program’s family planning services.
“FamilyPACT is on the governor’s 2010-2011 budget proposal ‘trigger list’ of programs to be eliminated if billions of dollars in other federal funds don’t materialize,” Constantine said.
If that happens, he and others predict Kern’s teen birth rate could double, costing millions more in medical care, welfare support and foster placement than the cost of preventing those pregnancies.
“It’s very hard to predict the increase in teen births that would result from a loss of the FamilyPACT program, but it’s safe to say that it would be staggering,” Constantine said.
Other programs — including one that targeted the siblings of teen mothers who are thought to be at extreme risk of teen pregnancy — are gone now, said Bill Phelps, chief of programs at Clinica Sierra Vista.
“Every year, Kern produces enough teen-birth babies to populate a high school,” Phelps said. “Almost 2,300 babies were born to teen mothers in 2008.”
The rate of births among teen mothers, age 15 to 19, in Kern County was 64.9 for every 1,000 teen girls in 2008, up from 63.8 the previous year.
TEACHING TEENS
Phelps has been working to reduce teen pregnancies in Kern County for close to 20 years, and he’s charted significant progress.
During the early 1990s, Kern was recording more than 100 teen births per 1,000 teen girls each year. But between 1994 and 2002, the rate declined steadily from 102.5 to 66. Yet Kern still lagged behind the state.
In California as a whole during the same period, the teen birth rate dropped from 65.5 to 40.6 per 1,000. And the state has continued to chart success, logging just 35.2 teen births per 1,000 in 2008, the lowest teen birth rate ever recorded in California.
In some high school classrooms, Gladden distributes infant-size dolls to the students to take home for a few days. The dolls are fitted with memory chips that record the “care” the faux-babies receive from their temporary parents — boys and girls. Educators say the experience gives teens a taste of the 24-hour-a-day responsibilities new parents face.
They also hope the lesson will convince teens to wait before they have sex. But for those who don’t wait — and Kern’s birth statistics show thousands don’t — they want to drive home the importance of using multiple birth control methods to protect against pregnancy and STDs.
Phelps credits effective education efforts for the progress made locally and statewide. Abstinence is always emphasized, he said, as the best choice for avoiding pregnancy and STDs. But comprehensive sex education — which includes information about condoms and other contraceptives — is more effective at preventing pregnancy than abstinence-only education, he said.
Most parents appear to agree, said Ron Valenti, the HIV/AIDS education coordinator for the Kern High School District.
During the past 18 years, more than 142,000 students in the district have been asked to attend classes that cover sexual abstinence as well as contraceptives, pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Letters are sent to parents ahead of time explaining the details of the classes. A parent night is held for those seeking more information. And it’s not uncommon, Valenti said, for parents to call his office with questions and concerns.
Of the 142,000 students the district has invited since 1993, 1,051 have opted out, Valenti said. That translates to 1 in 135 families choosing to pull their teens from the classes, an opt-out rate of just 0.74 percent.
Despite those numbers, the topic of sex education can still be fraught with controversy.
Linda Davis, executive director of The Bakersfield Pregnancy Center, a nonprofit organization opposed to abortion rights, says comprehensive sex-ed is dangerous. Instead, the center offers abstinence-only education at churches, schools and other venues.
Presenting condoms and other birth control as an option for sexually active teens is like asking teens to play “Russian roulette,” Davis said.
Taking some bullets out of a gun may decrease the chance of a tragedy, she argued, but why take such a chance? No contraceptive is 100 percent effective.
WHY IS KERN’S RATE HIGHER?
When you ask the people who work in the field, no one pretends to know all the answers. One thing is sure: teens have been engaging in sexual activity throughout human history — even in the Eisenhower ’50s.
Teen birth rates in the U.S. actually peaked in 1957 — remember the baby boom? — but dominant social mores at the time meant most pregnant teens were married first, got married after the pregnancy was discovered or gave up the baby to adoption. Pregnant teens were hidden from view.
While she acknowledged that thousands of Kern County teens are sexually active, The Pregnancy Center’s Davis said the best choice is still to promote chastity in education.
“Are some going to choose not to use these (abstinence) tools?” she said. “Yes, but we think it’s better to shoot for the best choice for teens.”
The abstinence-only push by social conservatives was largely rejected by the state of California during the past decade, and supporters of the comprehensive approach say the falling statewide birth rates support that decision.
While abortion rates by county are not available, Davis said, many other areas of the state have easier access to abortion, possibly skewing Kern’s teen birth rate higher than other regions of the state.
“Maybe it means there are fewer teens in Kern County having abortions,” she said of Kern’s high birth rates.
Hispanic teens continued to have the highest birth rate in California at 56.9 per 1,000, while the rate for whites was 14.2 per 1,000. But the birth rate for Hispanic teens in Kern is even higher, with 90 per 1,000 teen girls delivering babies in 2008. White teens in Kern gave birth at a much higher rate as well, with 37 per 1,000 becoming teen mothers, close to 2 1⁄2 times the rate of whites statewide.
Black teens also showed very high birth rates in Kern compared to the state as a whole while teens of Asian descent had the lowest birth rate of any ethnic group at 17.7 per 1,000 teen females.
“Hispanics are really a lot of different cultures,” Davis said. “First generation (immigrants) can be a lot different than third generation.”
Everyone agrees the issue is extremely complex, with the nation’s sex-heavy popular culture, changing norms and multi-generation teen births affecting decisions made by teens.
All the experts agree that children who live in a two-parent home with adults who are closely involved in their lives are less likely to give birth as teenagers.
Those teens without that stable home structure often fall back on school for support.
But is it possible that some schools in conservative Kern County are less likely to include condom and other birth control in sex education?
Phelps said he’s seen evidence of it in Kern for years.
“There are individual school administrators and districts that do not want this information disseminated in their schools,” he said.
Rather than the “Russian roulette” analogy when talking to kids about condoms and other birth control, Phelps prefers the “fire extinguisher” analogy.
“No one plans on having a fire in their home,’” he said. “But the smart ones have one ready just in case.”
