Study: Nevada teen birth rate falling

Thursday, Nov. 21, 2002 | 9:53 a.m.

Nevada officials welcomed a study released this week that says the state's teen birth rate is dropping, but said further education is needed to keep even more adolescent girls from getting pregnant.

The study by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy said that since 1999 the state's teen birth rate has dropped from 61 per 1,000 girls ages 15 to 19 years old to 56 per 1,000 girls in 2001.

The results came as another national study reflected better health and safety trends for teenagers. The report by ChildTrends, a nonprofit group that studies children's issues, showed that teen homicide nationwide dropped by over 50 percent between 1993 and 2000 and teen suicides also dropped by 26 percent.

Nevada has come a long way in its teen pregnancy prevention efforts, Attorney Frankie Sue Del Papa said on Wednesday as a new national database became available.

In the mid- to late 1990s Nevada had the most teen pregnancies in the nation per capita.

Nevada was ranked eighth from the bottom in the nation for teen births, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

"While Nevada's teen birth rate is dropping, we in the health community cannot become complacent about the improvements," said Jessica Cowee, abstinence education contractor for the Nevada State Health Division.

"We must still work hard to educate our youth about the challenges of teen pregnancy, for their sake certainly, and also for the sake of Nevada's struggling economy," Cowee said. "The social costs are enormous."

Some of the dangers she cited of teen pregnancies include:

In Nevada the Governor's Youth Advisory Council has made teen pregnancy prevention its top priority.

The council offers "Abstinence Works!" a presentation for students 9 to 14 years old that explains the benefits of sexual abstinence until marriage.

The State Partnership to Prevent Teen Pregnancy was established in July 2001 and has awarded $250,000 to five local Community Action Teams, or CATs, and to support a statewide marketing campaign.

The teams are currently running teenage pregnancy prevention programs in Las Vegas, Winnemucca, Dayton and Sparks.