Annual Teen Births in Cincinnati At Lowest Number Since 1988
CINCINNATI -- Births to young teenage girls in Cincinnati declined to 227 in 2001, the lowest annual number of teen births recorded since at least 1988, according to the annual survey of the Postponing Sexual Involvement (PSI) program.
PSI, a United Way agency, is an abstinence education program of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center aimed at reducing teen parenthood. PSI has been tabulating teen birth data since 1988.
The results of the annual PSI survey are being announced this year in conjunction with National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Day, May 7. Teens are encouraged to visit http://www.teenpregnancy.org/ on this day to take a "quiz" that presents several real-life scenarios involving sex and asks them to choose a course of action. The quiz is designed to help teens come up with their own plans for avoiding pregnancy.
The PSI evaluation looks at births in five hospitals to girls 12 to 16 years old living within Cincinnati Public School district zip codes. The hospitals are University, Good Samaritan, Bethesda North, Christ and Mercy Franciscan in Mt. Airy. The evaluation included Bethesda Oak before it closed in 2000.
Births to young teens declined 42 percent between 1993 and 2002, from 391 to 227. A direct comparison between local and national births is not available, in part because national statistics look at birth rates, while PSI looks at numbers of births. The national middle-teen birth rate for 15- to 17-year-olds declined 36 percent between 1991 and 2001, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
The Ohio middle-teen birth rate declined 40 percent during the same time period.
"Young teen births have gone down and stayed down in the Cincinnati area," says Christopher Kraus, JD, PSI coordinator. "While the PSI program cannot claim credit for this dramatic trend, it would be reasonable to infer that PSI is among the many factors responsible for the decline in births to young teens."
Despite recent declines, four of every 10 girls in the United States get pregnant at least once by the age of 20.
Two physicians at Cincinnati Children's brought PSI to Cincinnati, and the program began in the Cincinnati Public Schools in September of 1990, with full implementation for all Cincinnati Public School seventh graders in 1992. PSI heavily involves role playing, in which older teens, known as "teen leaders," provide the instruction. These teen leaders must serve as believable messengers for the proposition that teens can postpone sex and still be normal. In the classroom, middle school age students play out classic confrontations between boys and girls, learning to cope with and resist social and peer pressure to become sexually active at a young age.
Sixty-six teen leaders directed instruction this year to more than 3,000 students. More than 800 teen leaders have instructed 45,000 young teens in Cincinnati since 1990. "The teen leaders are the single most influential factors in this program's success, based on program evaluations," says Kraus. "They give compelling reasons to postpone sexual intercourse."
Cincinnati teen leader Ra'Shawn Brown, a junior at The Hughes Center, was recently selected to the national teen advisory board of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, one of the founding partners of the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
PSI also includes PSI PAYOFF, a training and consultation service for other school districts interested in establishing teen leadership Postponing Sexual Involvement programs.
Contact Information
Jim Feuer, 513-636-4656,
jim.feuer@cchmc.org
