Leading Health Indicator 13 Responsible Sexual Behavior Florida 2010 Goal for Children and Youth Reduce pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases in youth HP 2010 Goal Promote responsible sexual behaviors, strengthen community capacity, and increase access to quality services to prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and their complications

Reductions in teen births occurred among all racial and ethnic groups except Hispanic youth. The largest reductions occurred among black teens, though teen pregnancy among black teen females is almost twice that of white females.

Great progress has been made in reducing teen pregnancy and teen births in the 1990s.

Repeat births dropped by 30 percent. Continuing to reduce the number of children who become pregnant is important. Pregnant and parenting teens are less likely to remain in school, to seek and receive early ongoing prenatal care, more likely to have a low birthweight child, to have another pregnancy while still a teen, for their infants to die in the first year of life, to abuse or neglect their child and to be unmarried. ^(3-7)   While raising a child is challenging at any age, children and youth who become parents must somehow manage to get their education, mature and become economically self-sufficient very quickly. Studies controlling for behaviors which result in adverse outcomes have found that the increased risk for poor birth outcomes is not related to biology, but to behaviors more prevalent among youth who become pregnant (e.g., smoking, drug use, lack of prenatal care).^{(8, 9)}   Increasing awareness of the difficulties faced by teen parents and their children has resulted in greater community supports for prenatal care, child care, and the continuation of education for adolescent parents.

Figure 64: Births to U.S. and Florida Youth, 1991, 2000 and 2001

Sources: S. Ventura, TJ Matthews and B. Hamilton, National Vital Statistics Report, Volume 50, No 9, May 30, 2002, p 2 and Volume 50 No 10 June 6, 2002 *Florida data is from Florida Vital Statistics 1991, 2000, 2001 PHIDS http://hpeapps.doh.state.fl.us/phids/Phids1.asp Note: There are variations in Florida Vital Statistics numbers and Federal Vital Statistics Reports of State Incidences. The Florida data was used for this reason.