"Kappan" editor Rafael Heller talks with the Guttmacher Institute's Laura Lindberg, one of the nation's leading researchers in the field of adolescent sexual and reproductive health, about recent data and trends related to teens' sexual behavior, contraceptive use, pregnancy rates, and more, including their experiences with school-based…

By providing HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP (a single daily oral pill), in a primary care college health setting, clinical providers can make a dramatic contribution to the current and long-term health and well-being of the students they see. This viewpoint article describes the approach taken to instituting primary care PrEP services at…

Young African American and Latina women aged 15 to 24 are more likely to adopt short-acting forms of contraception over long-acting reversible contraception. Mobile applications and other forms of digital media may be useful for providing adolescents with information about sexual and reproductive health both inside and outside of the health care…

Comprehensive sexuality education programs are based on the idea that young people have the right to be informed about their sexuality and to make responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health. Despite demonstrating the ability to help youth delay the onset of sexual activity, reduce frequency and number of sexual partners, and…

Young people ages 10-24 account for 25 percent of the world's population: a total of 1.8 billion, most of whom are living in low- and middle-income countries. They face significant challenges, including HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), adolescent pregnancy, unsafe abortion, and gender-based violence. Youth have the right to lead…

The United States has one of the highest unintended pregnancy rates of all industrialized nations in the world, with 13% of those occurring among the adolescent population. In 2005, the adolescent birthrate in the United States was 40.5 per 1,000 women and increased 3% in 2006 (Martin et al., 2009). Unintended pregnancy and motherhood can have a…

Nearly one third of Nigeria's total population of 148.1 million is between the ages of 10 and 24. Nigerian adolescents' sizeable share of the population makes them integral to the country's social, political and economic development. Nigeria's development is compromised by the sexual and reproductive health issues afflicting its youth. Lack of…

When young people feel unconnected to home, family, and school, they may become involved in activities that put their health at risk. However, when parents affirm the value of their children, young people more often develop positive, healthy attitudes about themselves. Although most adults want youth to know about abstinence, contraception, and…

This report addresses the problem of sexually active teenagers who either do not use contraception or use it inconsistently. Psychological and cognitive barriers to contraception use are briefly reviewed and the development of a cognitively oriented intervention designed to modify beliefs inimical to contraceptive use is discussed. The selection…

The reproductive health of American adolescents has been, and continues to be, a matter of serious concern. America's teen birth rate--already the highest among developed nations--is again on the rise, and rates of sexually transmitted diseases among American teens are very high. As such, the development and identification of effective…

The Plain Talk initiative, developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, was designed to increase the amount and quality of communication that parents and community adults provided youth regarding responsible sexual decision making. It offered parents and other community adults information and skills necessary to communicate more effectively with…

Provides research-based answers to questions commonly posed by educators, parents, and others about the philosophy, methods, and impact of school sexual health education, discussing such issues as: whether these school programs are needed, what values they teach, whether the programs should teach about sexual orientation and abstinence, and…

Although ethnic and racial disparities exist in adolescent reproductive health, few studies have examined differences between members of different minority groups. This paper describes differences in measures of reproductive health behaviors, cognitions and social context between African-American (n=170) and Puerto Rican (n=150) adolescent females…

If risk taking is in some measure a signal to others by the person taking risks, the model of "costly signaling" predicts that the more the apparent cost of the risk to others exceeds the perceived cost of the risk to the risk taker, the more attractive that risk will be as a signal. One hundred and twelve visitors to youth…

Effectiveness of a three-phase program to provide inner-city high school freshmen with skills to enhance self-perception and exercise greater control over their lives (particularly sexual behavior) was tested. Pretesting and posttesting indicated a significant decrease in frequency of sexual activity and increase in contraception use by program…