Births to Teens
Pettis County
Caring Communities Partnership
Core Result: Children succeeding in school
Benchmark: Births To Teens, ages 15 – 19
February 2002
Objective
To decrease the teen pregnancy rate in Pettis County from 94 births per 1000 girls, ages 15 -19 to below 50 births per 1000 girls, by year end 2005.
Strategies
July, 2001, Pettis County Community Partnership helped to form a Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition to aid in the reduction of the teen pregnancy rate in Pettis County. Some strategies already implemented such as Postponing Sexual Involvement did not have the impact that we wanted. The Coalition’s mission is to educate the community and develop additional strategies to address the problem.
Baby Think It Over – allows students to care for “computerized babies” that simulate the experience of caring for a real baby. Since implementation of this program in 1999, four school districts in the county have used the babies each year. The students have expressed in their pre and post tests the appreciation they have for the amount of time and effort that it takes to care for a baby.
“Empathy Belly” Pregnancy Simulator – is an action-oriented, hands-on teaching aid to use with teenagers, male and female, to let them “experience” more then 20 of the typical symptoms and effects of pregnancy. Teens discover for themselves the many “price tags” or negative consequences that a pregnancy would impose on their teen-age lifestyle.
Teen Pregnancy Prevention Education – is the mission of the coalition. Abstinence-focused curriculum has been identified but funds are needed for implementation. Sedalia School District #200, the largest district in the county, is anticipating implementing this new curriculum, hopefully in the fall of 2002.
Successes:
The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition has a good cross-section of the community involved in the bi-monthly meetings. Representation comes from: parents, students, Pettis County Health Center, Division of Family Services, There Is Hope Ministries (home for pregnant teens), Birthright, school nurse, school board member, mental health professional, teachers, churches, and media.
Although, the introduction of a teen pregnancy prevention program in our community may generate conflict and differences of opinion, we are excited that so many organizations and individuals have agreed to work together to address this problem.
Even though the coalition has only been meeting for six months, we believe that we have accomplished a lot by getting the largest school district in Pettis County to agree to new curriculum and using a mandatory class such as P.E. as the vehicle which will reach a broader number of students.
The coalition has received newspaper coverage and has also been asked to speak to civic organizations. The word is getting out that a group of concerned citizens is working to do something about the high teen pregnancy rate in Pettis County.
Challenges:
Getting citizens to understand the scope of the teen pregnancy problem in Pettis County has been challenging. Most residents of the county do not know that teens are engaging in sexual activity at an earlier age and also that teens are likely to not use contraception.
Observations:
Not only is the teen pregnancy rate high in Pettis County but the rate for sexually transmitted diseases are high as well, which leads us to the importance of implementing abstinence focused curriculum.
Our research tells us that the children of teen mothers are at significantly increased risk of low birth weight and prematurity, mental retardation, poverty, growing up without a father, dependence upon public assistance, poor school performance, insufficient health care, inadequate parenting and abuse and neglect.
Local teen attitudes about being parents at a young age are alarming. For example a recent response of “READY” from a fifteen year old Pettis County female when asked on a Baby Think It Over pre-simulation questionnaire “What one word would best describe your feelings if you were to become a parent in the next year” tells us we need to find some way to change this thinking. We are aware that no one intervention method has all the answers and that is why we want to add an additional sex education curriculum.
Results
Funding/Return on Investment
Caring Communities | $1,250 |
Local Investment | $3,200 |
In-Kind | $37,982 |
Total | $42,432 |
Caring Communities dollars were used to implement the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition and to support the training for the new curriculum.
We were able to leverage $32.94 for every Caring Communities dollar.
Noteworthy
Seventeen people interested in seeing that different sex education curriculum be implemented in the schools in Pettis County traveled to Lebanon, MO in August to attend the “Best Choices” training session at their own expense and time. Lebanon schools embraced this curriculum two years ago and are waiting to reap the benefits over the next few years.
Barriers
Navigating school bureaucracy to get new programs/curriculum into schools is a barrier many groups like the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition encounter.
