Teen Pregnancy Rate increases in USA

I recently had this information sent to me from the Guttmacher Institute: It is alarming for me because Australia often follows US trends closely.

"FOLLOWING DECADE-LONG DECLINE, U.S. TEEN PREGNANCY RATE INCREASES AS BOTH BIRTHS AND ABORTIONS RISE"

For the first time in more than a decade, the nation’s teen pregnancy rate rose 3% in 2006, reflecting increases in teen birth and abortion rates of 4% and 1%, respectively.

These new data from the Guttmacher Institute are especially noteworthy because they provide the first documentation of what experts have suspected for several years, based on trends in teens’ contraceptive use—that the overall teen pregnancy rate would increase in the mid-2000s following steep declines in the 1990s and a subsequent plateau in the early 2000s.

The significant drop in teen pregnancy rates in the 1990s was overwhelmingly the result of more and better use of contraceptives among sexually active teens. However, this decline started to stall out in the early 2000s, at the same time that sex education programs aimed exclusively at promoting abstinence—and prohibited by law from discussing the benefits of contraception—became increasingly widespread and teens’ use of contraceptives declined.

“After more than a decade of progress, this reversal is deeply troubling,” says Heather Boonstra, Guttmacher Institute senior public policy associate. “It coincides with an increase in rigid abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which received major funding boosts under the Bush administration. A strong body of research shows that these programs do not work. Fortunately, the heyday of this failed experiment has come to an end with the enactment of a new teen pregnancy prevention initiative that ensures that programs will be age-appropriate, medically accurate and, most importantly, based on research demonstrating their effectiveness.” "

To read more click here:::

Pap Smear Awareness Week

Have a look at these free free display kits.

Every year in the month of May the state wide Pap Smear Awareness Week campaign promotes the importance of screening for the prevention of cervical cancer.

SA Cervix Screening Program encourages organisations to promote the importance of women 18 - 70 years of age, participating in screening. This includes young women who have received the cervical cancer vaccine.

FREE colourful Campaign Display kits with new promotional resources are available.

To assist with promotional events and activities organisations can apply for a Community Small Grant. Further grant information is available on the SA Cervix Screening website Applications close on 22 March 2010.
Thank you for your support in taking this important message to your community. We look forward to hearing from you.

New Kinsey Confidential Podcast

If you look on the far right sidebar and scroll a bit down the page you will see RSS feeds from the Kinsey Confidential page. It is worth having a look. If any of the headlines grab youtr attention then just click on them and have a read. You will find topics like ' Is it bad to last too long while masturbating?' or Pornography - just because it looks good doesnt mean it feels good'.

Go on - explore the site yourself. The headlines are always changing so keep coming to have a look at the latest.

Intercourse - a terrible teacher

I discussion that I find really useful. The following is from Cory Silverbegs sexuality blog on about.com

"The belief that sex - "real sex" -- always includes intercourse, that intercourse is in fact the goal of all sex, is one of our most counterproductive sexual beliefs. It serves all sorts of repressive and exclusionary functions, but from a learning and sexual growth perspective, it doesn't do any individual a lick of good. Intercourse is a terrible teacher. Almost every other kind of sexual interaction offers better and more varied opportunities to learn how to communicate verbally and non-verbally with a partner; how to read your partner's body and touch them in a way that communicates your intentions, and how to open up to feeling a partner's touch. Intercourse is great, but it's no way to learn how to have sex, and you waited a long time to have it and now think that once you've had it your done, you're missing out.

I agree with Cory. We need to challenge the notion that intercourse is the be all and end all. Go here to read more.

Youthworker education comes to Mt Gambier

Shine SA in partnership with Portland District Health
would like to once again offer the following education to all interested youth workers, health workers, school welfare workers, teachers and others,

The SE&X Course (Sexuality Expression & Xploration)



Course content overview

Topics covered include:
• what is sexual health work with young people and how does it fit with youth work?
• supporting diversity, including CALD, disability and Indigenous young people
• identity, homophobia and same-sex attraction
• explicitness in sexual health training
• working with young men
• working with young women
•communication, negotiation and decision-making skills
• risk and safety
• legal issues
• contraception
• pregnancy
• sexually transmitted infections
• relationship violence and sexual assault
• domestic violence
• sexual health counselling
• designing a sexual health program


WHEN : 22/23/24 March, face to face in Mt Gambier + online component: This requires the participant to have broadband, wireless or satellite connection to the internet. = 5 hrs, dates to be arranged before 22/23/24th
Cost: $375.00 (GST free).
We are applying for some funding to reduce the cost.
Places are limited, ensure you enrol early.

Contact details
For course details or to enrol contact Sue Miller Youth Health worker at Portland District Health on:
Tel: (03) 5522 1180
Email: smiller.pdh@swarh.vic.gov.au

Please note all enrolments need to be in three weeks prior to course commencement.
Expressions of interest to Sue by the 22nd of Feb 2010 please

Public Role of Religion and its Social and Gender Implications

I found this article facinating because I have such an interest re the roles of gender abd the sexual health of young people. Below is an abstract of this article. If you want to see more go to the United nations Research Institute for Social Development

Public Role of Religion and its Social and Gender Implications

Authors: Anne Phillips, José Casanova

In feminist, as in mainstream, thinking, there has been a reassessment of the relationship between religion and politics. For much of the twentieth century, it was assumed that religion was at odds with gender equality, and campaigners for women’s rights looked to the spread of secular principles and attitudes as an important engine of change. But the notion that secularism, understood as the complete separation of politics from religion, is the precondition for progressive politics has been challenged by critics of the secularization thesis, including José Casanova. Specifically within feminism, it has been challenged by the importance attached to women’s agency, and the need to respect the choices of religious as well as non-religious women.

Yet religions can and do threaten gender equality, and particularly so when their authority over their members is enhanced by a formal or informal role in the political system. The essay argues that Casanova does not engage sufficiently with the severity of this issue, and that his resolution is too complacent both in its celebration of the democratic engagements of civil society, and its reliance on movements for internal reform. Civil society is not a neutral zone, and the associations that constitute civil society can reproduce social hierarchies and exclusions as often as they contest them. Internal reform, moreover, will be hardest to mobilize precisely where it is most needed. This paper addresses the relationship between religion, politics and gender equality through four aspects: (i) what authority, if any, states can cede to religious communities or groups without beginning to threaten gender equality; (ii) the informal impact of religions on attitudes and lives, beyond any institutionalized power; (iii) the possibilities and limits of internal reform; and (iv) the possibilities and difficulties of alliances between religious and secular groups. The central theme running through the essay is that religions most threaten gender equality when they are conceived of—and conceive themselves as—corporate bodies, capable of speaking with a unified voice. The key protection for women is a strong politics of individual rights. In arguing this, however, this paper stresses the difficulties surrounding the politics of rights. It is crucial both to recognize the centrality of individual rights and acknowledge the problems in their interpretation and implementation. This is not something that can be resolved at a purely theoretical level. It alerts us, rather, to the political issues.

Emergency Contraception Forum

Some of the SHineSA workforce development and resources team are providing a workshop on emergency contraception during this years Sexual health Awareness week.

This workshop is for pharmacists, youth workers, teachers, community health workers, nurses, midwives, doctors or anyone who works in the area of sexual health.

EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION A SEXUAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK EVENT
EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION

Program
• Panel
Dr Katrina Allen, Medical Education Coordinator, SHine SA
Mr Grant Kardachi, Pharmacist, PSA National Vice President
Dr Helen Calabretto, Senior Lecturer (Nursing) UniSA

• Interactive session discussing provision and use of EC
Workforce Forum
Monday 22 February 2010
5.30 –7.30 pm
Light supper from 5.00 pm
Education Development Centre
Milner Street, Hindmarsh

RSVP
8300 5317 or
SHineSACourses@health.sa.gov.au
by Wednesday 17 February
Places are limited, please book early.
This is a FREE event.