This article examines neighborhood-level factors to help explain why adolescent birth rate trajectories differ in certain communities in California, with rates in some areas remaining elevated or increasing while rates in other areas with similar demographic characteristics declined. Researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 94 community…

A father's mental health is important for family well-being, but research is scarce on paternal symptoms during the transition to fatherhood. This study identified fathers' latent mental health trajectory classes from the pre- to postnatal period and examined their associations with early fathering experiences. It further analysed, whether a…

Child maltreatment is associated with increased risk of substance abuse in adulthood. However, prior investigations have not examined substance use specifically in pregnancy and have relied on self-report of substance use. The present study addresses these gaps via secondary analysis of 295 primarily low-income, Black postpartum women who agreed…

This study seeks to explain macrolevel drivers of adolescent fertility rate using a panel data set derived from 17 Latin American countries over a period of 16 years (1997-2012). While many studies of adolescent fertility have focused on individual-level explanations, this study explores whether adolescent fertility rate is correlated to…

A healthy lifestyle is important for mothers during the postpartum period. This study was conducted to determine the effects of a lifestyle educational package in primiparous women. This randomized clinical trial was conducted on 220 mothers assigned to two groups using block randomization. In the intervention group, the mothers received…

This study examined whether parental alcohol use in adolescence, adulthood, and for mothers, during pregnancy, was related to their young children's functioning in terms of their on-time development as indicated by the number of developmental areas in which children experienced delay. Observed parenting practices and family socioeconomic status…

Previous studies show that when Nigerian adolescent girls, especially those in the Niger Delta, become pregnant they drop out of school and may never go back again but become low level labourers or miscreants to the society. This study investigated the extent of teenagers involvement in sex, pre-disposition of females to pregnancy in the Niger…

During the high school years, most young people in the United States receive school-based sexuality education, but there is little research on what they want to know about sex and sexuality but may be afraid to ask. This study is a content analysis of anonymous questions about sex (N = 645) asked by ninth-grade students from the greater Los…

A systematic literature review was conducted to assess the utility of Positive Youth Development (PYD) concepts in promoting positive sexual health behaviors in young minority adolescents (n = 12 studies). Interventions reported significant associations between PYD-focused interventions and ever having sex, sexual partners in the last 30 days,…

Substance use and alcohol abuse during pregnancy are significant public health concerns. Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is a withdrawal syndrome that infants exposed to opioids may experience in the first few days of life. For most infants with NAS, exposure to opioids occurs during pregnancy while they are fetuses. Similarly, prenatal alcohol…

Background: As pregnant mothers increasingly engage in shared decision making regarding prenatal decisions, such as induction of labor, the patient's level of activation may influence pregnancy outcomes. One potential tool to increase patient activation in the clinical setting is mobile applications. However, research is limited in comparing…

Psychiatric disorders are more common in the mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or intellectual disability (ID) after the birth of their child. We aimed to assess the relationship between women's psychiatric contacts and subsequent offspring with ASD/ID. We linked three Western Australian registers to investigate pre-existing…

Background: To reduce teen pregnancy rates, prevention programs must be consistently available to large numbers of youth. However, prevention efforts have been historically conducted with little emphasis on ensuring program sustainability. This study examined the needs and barriers to sustaining teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) programming in…

The urgency of the analyzed issue is due to the study of the basic issues of medical ecology: the dynamics of demographic indicators, the correlation of somatic and reproductive public health, depending on the influence of physical factors of the urban environment on public health on the basis of medical and geographic mapping. The article aims at…

This executive summary describes the research that was conducted based on the following question: "How could a philanthropic investment of $1 billion dramatically increase upward social mobility for low-income individuals and families?" The intent of the research was to create a series of roadmaps that illustrate how investments of $1…