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Sex-Ed
Programs Work
WASHINGTON
(Reuters Health) - Pregnancy prevention programs that include
talking to teens about their sexual behavior and instructing them
on contraception use do not increase sexual activity among young
people, according to a report released Wednesday.
The report,
which reviewed 73 controlled studies of over 250 pregnancy prevention
programs from across the country, concluded that programs that
stress discussions of sexuality with teens may work best at delaying
sexual experimentation and ultimately preventing pregnancy. The
report further concludes that abstinence-only programs have not
shown promising results.
``The overwhelming
weight of evidence clearly shows that sex and HIV education programs...do
not increase sexual activity as some people have reasonably feared,''
said Dr. Douglas Kirby, who authored the report for the National
Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
The report
highlighted eight model programs that have successfully lowered
teen pregnancy rates. Five of those programs focus primarily on
sexual behavior in attempts to convince teens to abstain from
sex but to use condoms or other contraception if they decide to
have sex.
Two others
highlighting community service as a confidence building--and even
a distracting--influence on at-risk children also made the list
of the best strategies.
The authors
deemed an eighth program combining sexual education with tutoring,
work counseling, sports activities, contraception services, and
other help for teens as most effective. That project, called the
Carerra Program, succeeded in cutting the teenage girls' pregnancy
rate in half for up to 3 years, Kirby said.
Left off the
list were any of the controversial ``abstinence only'' programs
that stress avoiding sex until marriage with no talk of safer
sex practices for teens. Most of those programs are not large
enough or old enough to have been studied properly, though few
have shown any ability to delay sexual intercourse in young people
or prevent early pregnancies, Kirby said.
``The few
early results from abstinence-only programs are not encouraging,''
he said.
Such programs
came into public focus after Congress passed the 1996 Welfare
Reform Law. That law targeted $85 million per year in federal
money to teen pregnancy programs that restricted their message
to one of abstinence until marriage. Between $200 million and
$300 million in other federal money still goes to programs that
discuss sexuality with teens.
Paul Webster,
director of education services at the conservative Institute for
Youth Development said that abstinence-only programs have not
been given the funding or the time necessary to prove their worth.
``A lot of
taxpayers have a moral objection to promoting sexually explicit
conversations to school children,'' Webster said in an interview
with Reuters Health.
Sarah Brown,
president of the National Campaign, said that most Americans favor
a combined approach and blamed the debate pitting abstinence-only
programs against sex education on ``a narrow band of right- and
left-wing ideologues.''
Research,
Brown said, is useful in deciding what works. But regardless of
study outcomes, communities will continue to make their own educational
choices based on local values, politics, religion, and economics.
The study's most effective program combining sex education with
life and work support was by far the most expensive at more than
$4,000 annually per teen.
Reference
Source 89
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