07/09/08 -Teen birth rates rise: Prevention still the key

Recently, a furor erupted in the town of Gloucester, Mass., after a high school principal claimed publicly that at least some of his school's 17 students who became pregnant in the last year had done so as part of a pact.

News stories have since focused mostly on the extraneous: Was there really a pact? Were the girls influenced by last year's award-winning movie "Juno"?
But few have pointed out that the jump in the number of pregnancies at Gloucester High, which until now had averaged about four a year, is an extreme example of what may be a troubling trend: A national rise in the number of American teens giving birth.
Even Solano County has seen it. After more than a decade of decline, Solano's teen birth rate nudged up 1.7 percent between 2004 and 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

A study released in May by the Public Health Institute noted that Solano's 488 teenage births in 2006 cost taxpayers $16 million annually in lost tax revenue and public medical and assistance costs. Add in the teen mother's lost income, productivity and private medical expenses, and the "societal costs" come to $35 million a year, the report said.
To its credit, Solano's 31.5 births per 1,000 teens is lower than the statewide average (37.8) and far better than the national average (41.9).

In fact, California is doing a better job preventing teen births than many other states. Some studies have suggested that is because California consistently has rejected abstinence-only sex education, instead favoring comprehensive programs that encourage abstinence while supplying those who choose to ignore that good advice with age-appropriate and medically accurate information about preventing pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
Providing those programs isn't cheap. The Public Health Institute report, appropriately titled "No Time for Complacency," estimates the 2007-08 cost of the state's prevention programs at $229 million. "Yet," the report pointed out, "had California continued to experience its dismal teen birth rate of 71 per 1,000 from 15 years ago, we would have had an additional 46,283 teen births in 2006. Translated into cost savings, our success represents an annual savings to California taxpayers of $1.5 billion, and a total annual savings to society of $3.3 billion."
Some of those prevention programs may well lose funds as the Legislature and the governor wrestle with the $15 billion hole in California's budget. But as they contemplate cuts, lawmakers would do well to remember that prevention is far less costly in the long run.
Besides, as much progress as California has made in bringing down the teen birth rate, it's not nearly as good as it could be. As the report notes, the median rate of teen births in other Western democracies, including Canada, Australia, Japan and a dozen European countries, is 9.2 per 1,000.
Figuring out what those countries are doing that we aren't should be the next goal of California's pregnancy prevention specialists.