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1. How do I order National Campaign resources?
2. I'm very interested in helping prevent teen pregnancy. What can I do?
3. I'm a teen parent, how can I help?
4. Is there an organization to prevent teen pregnancy in my area? If not, how do I start one?
5. Are there effective teen pregnancy prevention programs?
6. Does the Campaign provide funding? How can I get funding?
7. What does the National Campaign do to help prevent teen pregnancy?
8. Where can I find more information on teen pregnancy?
9. What are the teen pregnancy rates in my state?
10. What are the teen pregnancy rates in my city/county?
11. Where can I find prior years' rates to see if teen pregnancy is getting better or worse?
12. Why don't you have more recent statistics?
13. Can you explain what these statistics mean - in plain English?
14. What's the difference between a pregnancy rate and a birth rate?
15. How is the statistic "3 in 10 girls become pregnant as a teen" (formerly "35%") calculated?
16. I have a report that says the pregnancy rate is different than what you have posted on your website. Which one is correct?
17. How do I cite online fact sheets from the National Campaign?
18. Can I get someone from the Campaign to speak at my conference?
19. Does the National Campaign have an annual conference?
20. Can I get an internship with the Campaign?
21. What is happening/happened in my state or community for the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy?
22. Do abstinence programs work? What are the federal guidelines?
23. Does the Campaign endorse abstinence-only or comprehensive sex education?
24. I'm from a country other than the United States. Where can I find information on teen pregnancy in my country?
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1. How do I order National Campaign resources?
- Use our online store: purchases are 100% secure and your order is received instantly - this is the fastest way to complete your transaction.
- By fax: send purchase orders to 202-303-0441, attention "Fulfillment."
- By check: please indicate which resources you wish to order and make your check payable to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen pregnancy. Mail your check and order to:
the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
1776 Massachusetts Avenue, Ste 200
Washington, DC 20036
Check out our Materials Bibliography for a complete listing of National Campaign products, categorized by topic.
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2. I'm very interested in helping prevent teen pregnancy. What can I do?
There are a number of ways you can help the national effort to prevent teen pregnancy.
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3. I'm a teen parent, how can I help?
As a teen parent, you provide a uniquely powerful point of view on the subject of teen pregnancy. Sharing your story with other teens can help them appreciate the challenges of being a teen parent.
The Campaign is currently developing a teen website designed to provide information, stories, personal experiences, and advice to teens. We invite you to send us your stories via email to web@teenpregnancy.org - we may post part of your story in the "teens tell all" section of our website or use it to help build our new teen portal.
In addition, we encourage you to contact your state/local teen pregnancy prevention organization for possible local speaking opportunities and ways to get involved. We also provide a list of resources of teen parents.
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4. Is there an organization to prevent teen pregnancy in my area? If not, how do I start one?
Look for sources of support in other organizations around you - the school board, local businesses, health care professionals, the local health, welfare, and education departments, faith leaders, PTAs, youth groups, and reproductive health organizations. Once you have formed a start-up group of core players, you can further awareness of teen pregnancy in your area through information campaigns, educating elected officials, fundraisers, and National Day promotion.
Visit our state information page for more information and contacts.
We have many resources available to help you start or maintain a state/local organization to prevent teen pregnancy:
- First, there is a three-volume set called Get Organized: A Guide to Preventing Teen Pregnancy:
- Volume I: Focusing on the Kids opens with an overview of the promising programs that can help prevent teen pregnancy. The other chapters explain how to tailor programs to stages of adolescent development, create interventions for girls, involve boys and young men in prevention efforts, and involve young people themselves in developing and implementing programs.
- Volume II: Involving the Key Players focuses on the roles of traditional participants in prevention efforts, like schools and health care professionals, as well as some often overlooked players, including faith leaders, the business community, and parents.
- Volume III: Making It Happen concentrates on the logistics of developing a state or local coalition - or any major effort - to prevent teen pregnancy, including involving the community, assessing the needs of the community, planning, fundraising, working with the media, evaluating initiatives, and dealing with conflict.
This publication can be downloaded by chapter in PDF format.
- Our State Information section is an excellent way to stay informed of teen pregnancy rates in your state. In this web section, you can explore information about state teen pregnancy rates, including breakdowns by age and race/ethnicity. You can also research related topics, like teen birth rates, state demographics, teen risk behavior, and state activities to prevent teen pregnancy. It lists state contacts that may be helpful in starting a coalition, such as Departments of Health, Education, Labor, and Human Services; Governor's councils; foundations; and governmental and non-governmental organizations dealing with maternal and child health.
- Other National Campaign resources available for download or purchase that may be helpful include:
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5. Are there effective teen pregnancy prevention programs?
The National Campaign is strongly committed to fair, science-based evaluations of teen pregnancy prevention programs. While the Campaign does not endorse or sell program curricula directly, we do offer a comprehensive review of research on effective programs - Emerging Answers: New Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy. It can be ordered through our online store or downloaded as a PDF file.
Other related Campaign research-based publications include:
Other resources include:
- PASHA archive - PASHA is the Program Archive on Sexuality, Health, and Adolescence produced by Sociometrics.
- Child Trends - Child Trends is a nonprofit, nonpartisan children's research organization that provides research and data on teen pregnancy.
- ETR - is a private, non-profit corporation that provides educational resources, training and research on sexuality and health education.
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6. Does the Campaign provide funding? How can I get funding?
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy is not a grant-making organization and does not provide any funding, but does provides some fundraising resources for community-based groups:
- The National Campaign provides a chapter on fundraising in our toolkit, Get Organized: A Guide to Preventing Teen Pregnancy. The chapter, "Raising Funds for Teen Pregnancy Prevention," offers a wide range of information from goal-setting and donor research to developing an annual fund raising plan.
- Ready Resources offers practical guidance on how states and communities can use available Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) money to fund initiatives to prevent teen pregnancy, as illustrated by compelling and concrete examples from a few states. Ready Resources II provides information on why the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) is an important potential partner in teen pregnancy prevention, and offers examples and guidance for undertaking collaborative efforts. Both of these documents can be ordered by going to our online store.
- Most large independent foundations, as well as some family foundations, can be researched on the Foundation Center's website.
- Each state has a community foundation - often more than one - that gives exclusively to that region (i.e., the Santa Fe Community Foundation). The Foundation Center links to the community foundations that service each state.
- Businesses and corporations typically give in the areas where their businesses have a presence. When approaching any business for support - whether it be a small family-owned or a large multinational company - remember that in-kind services are always an option. For further information, visit the Foundation Center's page on corporate giving.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides a Healthy Youth Funding Database that lists current and past sources of school health program funding, including federal categorical cooperative agreements, private-sector funding, block grants, and state revenue funding.
- After-school programs can be effective in preventing teen pregnancy. Check out the Finance Project's 2003 report Finding Funding: A Guide to Federal Sources for Out-of-School Time and Community School Initiatives.
- The White House Community and Faith-Based Initiative provides information on funding sources available to community and faith-based organizations working to address a range of social issues. The website includes information about funding sources specifically geared to at-risk youth.
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7. What does the National Campaign do to help prevent teen pregnancy?
The About Us section of our website provides a thorough description of the Campaign, describes our leadership, and discusses how we address the challenge of reducing teen pregnancy.
The Campaign Prospectus, written in 1996 at the start of the Campaign, lays out the rationale and need for a National Campaign, describes our mission and guiding principles, proposed activities, and leadership, organization, and funding.
Finally, our quarterly newsletter, the Campaign Update, provides information about our current activities.
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8. Where can I find more information on teen pregnancy?
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9. What are the teen pregnancy rates in my state?
Our State Information section is an interactive way to find information about teen pregnancy, teen sexual behavior, and prevention programs state by state.
To find teen pregnancy rates for your state:
- Click on the state map
- Click on your state on the interactive map
- Click on Teen Pregnancy Data on the column on the left
- Click on Teen Pregnancy Rate on the column on the left
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10. What are the teen pregnancy rates in my city/county?
Some possible resources include:
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11. Where can I find prior years' rates to see if teen pregnancy is getting better or worse?
For changes over time in state teen pregnancy and birth rates, visit the State Information section on the Campaign's website.
- Go to State Information
- Click on your state on the interactive map
- Click on Teen Pregnancy Data or Teen Birth Data on the column on the left
- Click on Change in Teen Pregnancy Rates or Change in Teen Birth Rates on the column on the left.
In addition, click here for state birth rates back to 1970.
The Guttmacher Institute provides state pregnancy rates back to 1985 here.
We discuss recent trends in national teen pregnancy and birth rates in many places on our website, including our general "facts and stats" page and our fact sheet Recent Trends in Teen Pregnancy, Sexual Activity, and Contraceptive Use.
A comprehensive source for national teen pregnancy rates is our PowerPoint chart book, Just the Facts.
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12. Why don't you have more recent statistics?
While some of the statistics on our website may seem out of date, they are almost always the most recent statistics available. Unfortunately, some statistics - national and state teen pregnancy rates in particular - take a relatively long time to collect.
Birth data are released by the federal government in three waves. Preliminary rates for the previous year are typically released the following summer. Then, final rates are released at the end the following year. Finally, special reports with additional statistics are released on an irregular basis.
Three different national groups release pregnancy data: two branches of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (part of the federal government), and the Guttmacher Institute, a private nonprofit organization.
All three groups release pregnancy data on an irregular basis, and rates are typically 4-6 years behind the current year. This is due in part to the fact that, in addition to birth and miscarriage data, pregnancy data includes abortion data, which is difficult to collect - see The Guttmacher Institute's publication Issues in Brief: The Limitations of U.S. Statistics on Abortion for a discussion of the history and methods of abortion data collection. The Campaign's publication Just the Facts includes information on the differences between the three sets of pregnancy data.
Note that most state health departments also release teen pregnancy and/or birth data, and this data is sometimes more recent than data available from national sources. We rarely use this data for two reasons. First, rates are calculated differently in each state, so data cannot be compared across states or with national rates. Second, each state has a different schedule of releasing data, making it difficult to stay current with all 50 states.
Data on sexual activity and contraceptive use usually come from one of three government-funded surveys. Statistics for high school students usually come from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), which takes place every other year. Results from the 2003 YRBS were released in May 2004. The next YRBS took place in 2005, with results expected in mid-2006. Statistics for teen females (in school or not) usually come from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) and statistics for teen males (in school or not) have, in the past, usually come from the National Survey of Adolescent Males (NSAM). Both the NSFG and NSAM have typically occurred every 7-8 years. For the most recent data, visit our state information section and go to the teen risk behavior subsection.
The Campaign announces when new data are released through the Campaign E-GRAM. If you'd like to be notified of new data and Campaign updates, sign up for the E-GRAM here.
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13. Can you explain what these statistics mean - in plain English?
The most common statistic on our website is a rate, either a teen pregnancy rate or a teen birth rate. A rate measures the likelihood of teen pregnancy or birth happening within the population and is calculated by dividing the number of pregnancies or births by the teen population, then multiplying by 1,000.
For example, California's 1996 teen pregnancy rate of 125 per 1,000 means that out of every 1,000 teen girls living in California in 1996, 125 got pregnant that year.
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14. What's the difference between a pregnancy rate and a birth rate?
The teen birth rate is lower than the teen pregnancy rate because birth rates only include those pregnancies that end in a live birth (57% of all teen pregnancies in 2000). The pregnancy rate, on the other hand, includes all pregnancies - those ending in live births, abortions, and miscarriages.
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15. How is the statistic "3 in 10 girls become pregnant as a teen" (formerly "35%") calculated?
The Campaign recently developed a fact sheet describing the calculation method.
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16. I have a report that says the pregnancy rate is different than what you have posted on your website. Which one is correct?
It's likely that both are correct, they just come from different data sets. This could be for one of two reasons.
First, three different national organizations release pregnancy rates: the Guttmacher Institute, the National Center for Health Statistics (part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (also part of CDC). Pregnancy rates from these three organizations are different, even when they reflect the same year and geographic area.
Second, some states also publish pregnancy and birth rates. State published teen pregnancy rates, in particular, tend to be very different than state rates published by any of the national data sources. Abortion rates tend to be slightly lower, usually include only late-term miscarriages, and often use different age groups than do the national data sets. These three factors together can make rates from state health departments as much as 50-67% lower than state rates from AGI.
For a detailed discussion of the differences between the various available data sets, see the Campaign's publication Just the Facts.
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17. How do I cite online fact sheets from the National Campaign?
Most of our fact sheets do not have a specific author. For these documents, use our organization name as the author. For example, for the fact sheet Teen Pregnancy - So What?:
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. (2004). Teen Pregnancy - So What?. [Online]. Available: www.teenpregnancy.org/whycare/sowhat.asp. Washington: Author.
If a document is undated, you can assume it was written (or updated) in the current year. For the proper citation in a specific style such as APA or MLA, please consult a style manual or textbook.
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18. Can I get someone from the Campaign to speak at my conference?
Visit the National Campaign Speakers Bureau to submit your request for Campaign staff to speak at conferences, workshops and meetings. We will respond to your request as soon as possible.
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19. Does the National Campaign have an annual conference?
The short answer is no, the National Campaign does not have an annual conference.
However, over the course of any given year, we generally host a variety of events: regional conferences, regional faith leaders conferences, roundtable discussions, workshops, national teleconferences, seminars in Washington, DC, where we are headquartered, or webcasts. The frequency of these events is based on funding and staff availability.
The best way to stay informed of National Campaign events is to join our Notification Network.
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20. Can I get an internship with the Campaign?
The National Campaign hires interns during the fall, spring, and summer semesters. Check the Job Announcements page for more information.
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21. What is happening/happened in my state or community for the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy?
In 2006, hundreds of communities put together events to raise awareness and celebrate the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Review some of the activities. If your community did not participate last year, consider taking the initiative in the 6th Annual National Day, May 2, 2007.
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22. Do abstinence programs work? What are the federal guidelines?
'Abstinence education' refers to an educational or motivational program which:
- has as its exclusive purpose teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;
- teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school age children;
- teaches that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems;
- teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity;
- teaches that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects;
- teaches that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child's parents, and society;
- teaches young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to sexual advances; and
- teaches the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity.
This definition was originally included in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 (P.L. 104-193, Title IX, Sec. 912) for purposes of federal grants to states for abstinence education under the Maternal and Child Health block grant.
A similar definition has since been extended to community-based abstinence education funds under Special Projects of Regional and National Significance and certain portions of the Adolescent Family Life Program. These links provide additional federal guidelines about each of the funding sources.
The National Campaign addressed the efficacy of abstinence-only programs in two publications authored by Douglas Kirby, Ph.D. - Emerging Answers: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Do Abstinence-Only Programs Delay the Initiation of Sex Among Young People and Reduce Teen Pregnancy? Both publications concluded that when it comes to the effectiveness of abstinence-only programs, the jury is still out.
Specifically, Dr. Kirby writes: "There do not currently exist any abstinence-only programs with strong evidence that they either delay sex or reduce teen pregnancy. However, this does not mean that abstinence-only programs are not effective, nor does it mean that they are effective. It simply means that given the great diversity of abstinence-only programs combined with very few rigorous studies of their impact, there is simply too little evidence to know whether abstinence-only programs delay the initiation of sex. That is, 'the jury is still out.'"
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23. Does the Campaign endorse abstinence-only or comprehensive sex education?
In 1996, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy was formed to help address the alarming rate of teen pregnancy in America. From the outset, the Campaign knew that to make a dent in this problem, it had to be a non-partisan, non-ideological organization that could bridge the fundamental and meaningful value disagreements that exist on the issue.
Under the banner of being a "big tent" where everyone is welcome, one of the Campaign's goals has been to bring together all the different perspectives in teen pregnancy prevention. No one of good will is excluded. While some groups would try to highlight the rift between the sides of the sex education debate, the Campaign seeks to find common ground.
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24. I'm from a country other than the United States. Where can I find information on teen pregnancy in my country?
The National Campaign's goal is to reduce teen pregnancy rates in the U.S. by one third, so we don't do much work internationally. However, we do have a few resources.
Our fact sheet Where to Find the Facts About Teen Pregnancy provides sources for international statistics (see page 4 of fact sheet). You can also find statistics for U.S. territories such as Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, here.
For more resources, try using a search engine such as Google and typing in "teen pregnancy prevention" or "teen pregnancy statistics" plus your country's name. We used this method to find the links below, for the countries we are most often asked about.
Canada
UK
Australia
New Zealand
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*please note: the Campaign strives to keep its information as up to date as we can. However, due to the nature of the internet, this is not always possible. Please note that some of the above links (particularly those redirecting outside of teenpregnancy.org) may lead to old or out of date data and are meant as a starting point for your research.
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