Reuters, September 17, 2006
School health centers help reduce teen pregnancy
By Charnicia Huggins
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - School-based health centers that provide high school students with preventive health care services and counseling on how to reduce high-risk behaviors, such as unprotected sexual intercourse, may help decrease teen pregnancy rates, according to the findings of a Colorado study.
Pregnancy rates among black teens in Colorado have dramatically decreased since the early 1990s, even more so than the rates reported by other states across the nation. The steepest drop in pregnancy was observed among Colorado teens who attended schools with school-based health centers.
The "dramatic and unprecedented decline" in fertility rates "may be attributed to increasing access to physical and mental health services by locating them in schools, where students can easily use them when needed," according to co-authors Dr. Sue A. Ricketts and Bruce P. Guernsey, both of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment in Denver.
"High-risk students, previously without ready access to health care, embraced the availability of services they needed in school," the researchers added.
Between 1991 and 1997, the percentage of pregnant black adolescents dropped by 26 percent throughout the nation, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. However, the decline in Colorado was even greater -- 15 points lower -- than the national average and pregnancy rates were lower in Denver than in any other part of the state. In addition, the Colorado rates have continued to fall since 1997.
Ricketts and Guernsey investigated the association between Colorado's declining fertility rates and the state's establishment of school-based health centers in the 1990s. The centers promote healthy behaviors while providing various types of health care. Most school-based centers, which now appear in about 1,800 schools throughout the country, promote healthy behaviors and provide health services, including reproductive health services. Contraception services are offered off-site via student referrals.
Beginning in 1989, the researchers looked at health centers in three high schools in Denver that were first selected for the centers, beginning in 1989, and compared them with high schools without health centers.
They found that although fertility rates fell among black students in both categories of high schools, the greatest decline was observed among those in schools with health centers, they report in this month's issue of the American Journal of Public Health.