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Miami Herald
03-07-2025
- Health
- Miami Herald
The Teen Mom is Dying Out
While the birth rate has declined in general over the last 50 years, mothers aged between 15 and 19 have seen the most consistently steep fall. In 1975, there were 599,926 teen births in America – more than double the teen pregnancies recorded in 2024 (136,376), according to the U.N. Population Division. Among the teen births that do take place today, "the vast majority occur among folks who are 18 or 19," said Elizabeth Wildsmith, a family demographer and sociologist at Child Trends, a nonpartisan research organization. "Teen births have declined dramatically over the past several decades," she told Newsweek, citing a lower level of sexual activity among teenagers, a higher level of contraceptive use and wider social changes. "No easy answers," said Claire Brindis, co-director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Health National Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco. "No one factor can really explain the reductions," she told Newsweek, citing similar reasons to Wildsmith, along with improved access to education. Brindis also drew on the general trend of having children later, currently taking place across all age groups. "We have to give young people a lot of credit for being pregnancy-free," she said. Some 32 percent of high schoolers said they had ever had sex in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). This is a decrease from the 47 percent who said they had ever had sex a decade earlier, in 2013, and significantly lower than in 1991, when 54 percent said they had ever had sex. "I am not sure we have a clear understanding yet of the role that digital/social media is playing in shaping how and when youth form relationships, including sexual relationships, or their thoughts and behavior around parenthood," Wildsmith said. "There is likely a mix of positive and negative impacts. For example, online resources, especially reliable sources that use evidence-based information, may help youth learn about various contraceptive methods and more easily access them," she continued. "Similarly, they can provide access to content around what a safe and healthy romantic relationship looks like." "At the same time, we know that health misinformation on social media platforms is a serious concern," she added. She went on to align the decline in sexual activity with "a decline in the proportion of youth that have ever dated." Brindis also spoke about cultural shifts, pointing to the pandemic when she said: "Perhaps another factor is a residual of COVID, with more young people hanging out in groups, after long periods of isolation, and less likely to end up only in pairs." "Ironically, while more teens are exposed to pornography through social media, they are less likely to feel comfortable talking to each other and being in a relationship," she added. But she went on to speak about the impact of increased education and the choices this has provided. "Clearly, access to education has been shown to be a huge motivator," Brindis said, "as young women are surrounded by role models, including their moms, who have improved their own educational status and who hold great expectations that their daughters can break more glass ceilings than they were able to themselves." "Young women are more likely to explore how to protect themselves, including delaying having sex, having fewer partners, if they are sexually active (which reduces their risk as more steady partners will increase the likelihood of conversations about birth control protection in the context of all their other dreams," she added. While "the dramatic decline in the teen birth rate since the early 1990s has occurred across all race/ethnic and socioeconomic groups," as Wildsmith said, the declines "have been somewhat uneven across groups and there are still large disparities in the teen birth rate across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status." For example, teen birth rates among Native (20.9), Hispanic (20.8), Pacific Islander (21.2), and Black (19.3) teens were more than double that of white teens (8.4) and over ten times higher than Asian teens (1.8) in 2023, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in April, which used data from the National Center for Health Statistics. "We should recognize that there continues to be segments who are more likely to be at risk-young people who are poor or low income, those who live in rural communities, with less education, and with less hope for economic opportunities continue to be more vulnerable," Brindis said. "The risks are that we don't continue to invest in young people across all groups, and especially women, if education opportunities are shut off, if economic options (as an alternative to going to college), if student loans are eliminated or more difficult to get, if families have more economic struggles, if access to birth control or other social support services, for example, many of these positive trends can evaporate," she added. Last month, Newsweek broke down how birth rates have changed across all age groups over the past 50 years. While mothers between the ages of 50 and 54 had no babies in 1975, this number gradually increased to more than 100 over the years and was 159 in 2024. People in their twenties have had fewer babies, often delaying children to their thirties, which has meant the number of births in this age group has increased. America is one of many countries around the world struggling with falling birth rates. Fertility rates are projected to average 1.6 births per woman over the next three decades, according to the Congressional Budget Office's latest forecast released this year. This number is well below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman required to maintain a stable population without immigration. Many trying to tackle this issue have focused on public health policies and financial plans, often citing the 2008 financial crisis, its effect on housing, inflation and pay as a major contributor to why people delay having children, have fewer of them or to not have them at all. The Donald Trump administration has made this issue one of its priorities, with the White House exploring the possibility of giving women a "baby bonus" of $5,000, according to an April New York Times report. 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Newsweek
03-07-2025
- Health
- Newsweek
The Teen Mom is Dying Out
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. While the birth rate has declined in general over the last 50 years, mothers aged between 15 and 19 have seen the most consistently steep fall. In 1975, there were 599,926 teen births in America – more than double the teen pregnancies recorded in 2024 (136,376), according to the U.N. Population Division. Among the teen births that do take place today, "the vast majority occur among folks who are 18 or 19," said Elizabeth Wildsmith, a family demographer and sociologist at Child Trends, a nonpartisan research organization. "Teen births have declined dramatically over the past several decades," she told Newsweek, citing a lower level of sexual activity among teenagers, a higher level of contraceptive use and wider social changes. "No easy answers," said Claire Brindis, co-director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Health National Research Center at the University of California, San Francisco. "No one factor can really explain the reductions," she told Newsweek, citing similar reasons to Wildsmith, along with improved access to education. Brindis also drew on the general trend of having children later, currently taking place across all age groups. "We have to give young people a lot of credit for being pregnancy-free," she said. Teenagers Are Having Less Sex Some 32 percent of high schoolers said they had ever had sex in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS). This is a decrease from the 47 percent who said they had ever had sex a decade earlier, in 2013, and significantly lower than in 1991, when 54 percent said they had ever had sex. "I am not sure we have a clear understanding yet of the role that digital/social media is playing in shaping how and when youth form relationships, including sexual relationships, or their thoughts and behavior around parenthood," Wildsmith said. "There is likely a mix of positive and negative impacts. For example, online resources, especially reliable sources that use evidence-based information, may help youth learn about various contraceptive methods and more easily access them," she continued. "Similarly, they can provide access to content around what a safe and healthy romantic relationship looks like." "At the same time, we know that health misinformation on social media platforms is a serious concern," she added. She went on to align the decline in sexual activity with "a decline in the proportion of youth that have ever dated." Brindis also spoke about cultural shifts, pointing to the pandemic when she said: "Perhaps another factor is a residual of COVID, with more young people hanging out in groups, after long periods of isolation, and less likely to end up only in pairs." "Ironically, while more teens are exposed to pornography through social media, they are less likely to feel comfortable talking to each other and being in a relationship," she added. But she went on to speak about the impact of increased education and the choices this has provided. "Clearly, access to education has been shown to be a huge motivator," Brindis said, "as young women are surrounded by role models, including their moms, who have improved their own educational status and who hold great expectations that their daughters can break more glass ceilings than they were able to themselves." "Young women are more likely to explore how to protect themselves, including delaying having sex, having fewer partners, if they are sexually active (which reduces their risk as more steady partners will increase the likelihood of conversations about birth control protection in the context of all their other dreams," she added. Have Teen Pregnancies Changed For Everyone? While "the dramatic decline in the teen birth rate since the early 1990s has occurred across all race/ethnic and socioeconomic groups," as Wildsmith said, the declines "have been somewhat uneven across groups and there are still large disparities in the teen birth rate across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status." For example, teen birth rates among Native (20.9), Hispanic (20.8), Pacific Islander (21.2), and Black (19.3) teens were more than double that of white teens (8.4) and over ten times higher than Asian teens (1.8) in 2023, according to a Congressional Research Service report published in April, which used data from the National Center for Health Statistics. "We should recognize that there continues to be segments who are more likely to be at risk-young people who are poor or low income, those who live in rural communities, with less education, and with less hope for economic opportunities continue to be more vulnerable," Brindis said. "The risks are that we don't continue to invest in young people across all groups, and especially women, if education opportunities are shut off, if economic options (as an alternative to going to college), if student loans are eliminated or more difficult to get, if families have more economic struggles, if access to birth control or other social support services, for example, many of these positive trends can evaporate," she added. Photo-illustration by Newsweek/Getty/Canva People Are Having Children Later in General Last month, Newsweek broke down how birth rates have changed across all age groups over the past 50 years. While mothers between the ages of 50 and 54 had no babies in 1975, this number gradually increased to more than 100 over the years and was 159 in 2024. People in their twenties have had fewer babies, often delaying children to their thirties, which has meant the number of births in this age group has increased. America is one of many countries around the world struggling with falling birth rates. Fertility rates are projected to average 1.6 births per woman over the next three decades, according to the Congressional Budget Office's latest forecast released this year. This number is well below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman required to maintain a stable population without immigration. Many trying to tackle this issue have focused on public health policies and financial plans, often citing the 2008 financial crisis, its effect on housing, inflation and pay as a major contributor to why people delay having children, have fewer of them or to not have them at all. The Donald Trump administration has made this issue one of its priorities, with the White House exploring the possibility of giving women a "baby bonus" of $5,000, according to an April New York Times report.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
New Hampshire shouldn't retreat from substance misuse prevention programs
"We have all heard about the budget cuts that have been suggested to save money but we must ask at what cost?" (Getty Images) An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This legislative session has raised some concerns that not enough people understand that the best way to save money is to prevent the problem from ever even happening. We must emphasize this important life lesson to save existing prevention efforts and continue supporting our youth. We have all heard about the budget cuts that have been suggested to save money but we must ask: At what cost? Primary health prevention shows, on the very low end, that every dollar invested in prevention saves on average $6 in health care costs. When we expand that to substance misuse prevention efforts the estimated cost savings climbs to as high as $12 to $18 for every dollar spent on providing information and awareness on the dangers of drugs and alcohol to children and teens. New Hampshire prevention community coalitions and public health networks have been strategically working to lower the rates of substance misuse among our youth. It has taken time to build a strong network with qualified individuals who understand the process and how to effectively make change. The very foundation of this work and the infrastructure that helps keep it moving forward is in danger in many ways in our state at the moment. First, let's talk about House Bill 446, to make the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) that is administered to youth every two years and collects vitality important information, an opt-in survey. This means parents or guardians would have to sign a permission form for their child to participate in this survey. Currently there is a 10 day period prior to the survey that adults are made aware of the survey so they can review it and choose to opt their child out if they are uncomfortable with it. To be clear, the information collected in the survey is completely anonymous and on topics our youth are well versed in, curious about, and talking about, but are subjects their adults might find uncomfortable to talk about, like drug use, mental health, and sex. The data collected in these surveys allows community coalitions who come together to support the youth growing up in their towns and cities to design messaging and programming to help support our youth making healthy choices and provide them with knowledge of where to go for help and support. The needs identified also allow us to reach out to our partners across the state and share information and resources on how to best address these needs. This leads us to our next concern: the budget. The New Hampshire Liquor Commission-Division of Enforcement (NHLE) is on the list of cuts in the current proposed budget. NHLE does so much behind the scene work to help with prevention but on a community-facing level they are the people we can call if we have a report of an establishment selling alcohol or tobacco to an underage buyer. They help us raise awareness that the legal age to purchase alcohol and tobacco is 21, and they are the ones who enforce these laws if they are broken. The Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program is also on the line to be cut. This department provides updated information and awareness resources for local community youth groups, schools, and organizations to share and raise awareness about the current threats around nicotine products, and their harmful effects on teens and adults alike. They also provide access to ways to quit for those who may be ready to take that next step toward a healthier lifestyle, such as 1-800-quit-now and My Life My Quit for teens. The loss of even one of these tools (the YRBS, NHLE, or Tobacco Control) could drastically change the landscape of prevention work in New Hampshire. All three are vital tools in our New Hampshire prevention tool box to help keep our kids and communities safe from the unknown harms that can come with exploring substance misuse at a young age. If you care about our young people, or you care about a budget that invests it money wisely to make a difference and save you money in the future, please speak up so the people who are invested in keeping kids, communities, and roads safe in New Hampshire can continue to do the great work they do — saving lives and limiting lifelong addiction.
Boston Globe
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Burlington parents express outrage over detailed sex questions in middle school health survey
Advertisement The survey, which has been administered in grades 6-12 at the middle school and high schools for more than a decade, asked a wide range of questions regarding sexual behavior, mental health, substance abuse, bullying, discrimination, nutrition, and violence as part of a nationwide data collection effort by the Related : Parents said this year's survey in Burlington contained changes in wording, which were made by a private consultant working with Burlington officials, resulting in definitions of various sexual activities that were far too graphic for students as young as 11. The survey for middle school students, for instance, asked students whether they had engaged in oral or anal sex and included detailed descriptions of each. It also asked students if they had used sex toys 'vaginal or anal.' Advertisement Adrianne Simeone, whose eighth-grade son was given the survey last month over her objections, said she was shocked when he came home and told her about the 'weird' questions he was asked on the survey. He is one of the students represented in one of the complaints. 'I talk to my son about sex,' she said. 'It's not like it's a foreign concept to him, but anal sex, oral sex, sex toys — no. Even though my son is in eighth grade, that's pretty horrific to me.' Superintendent Eric Conti declined an interview request. He instead referred to a statement the district posted on its website Wednesday that briefly addressed the issue and also included extensive information on the survey, including copies of questions posed to students this year and in previous years. 'Burlington Public Schools acknowledges that during the administration of the 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), there were areas for improvement, particularly in the opt-out process and delivery of the proctor script,' the statement said. 'We recognize the importance of clear communication with families regarding student participation in surveys of this nature.' Controversy over the Burlington youth risk survey comes as the Trump administration has been cracking down on federal data collection on sexual orientation and gender identity. In January, data from the youth risk surveys had been The president also has been pushing to expand parental rights. David Hanafin, whose son is at the center of the other federal complaint, said his concerns, as well as other parents', are unrelated to Trump's actions. Instead, they center on the values and sensibilities of individual parents and the kinds of information their children are exposed to. Hanafin said he opted his son out of the survey, but the school still gave it to him. Advertisement Other parents, he said, didn't know about the survey and their right to opt out because the district notified them through Parent Square, an online communication platform the district uses to inform parents about a range of items during the day, making it easy for parents to miss critical information. Hanafin said there are days he receives between 20 to 25 notifications. Even when parents do opt out, he said, the decision still doesn't fully shield their children from the survey because other students frequently talk about it afterward during lunch or on the bus. Some children also have been taking screenshots of the questions. He wants Burlington to stop administering the surveys. 'The surveys are wholly inappropriate,' he said. 'They push it way too early and way too much.' He said the schools should stick with teaching reading, writing, math, history, and science. The Burlington controversy erupted soon after the survey was given last month. The mother of another student who took screenshots of the questions later posted them on social media, asking other parents if they knew their children were taking a survey with those kinds of questions. Sam Whiting, legal counsel for the legal center, said his organization anticipates filing additional complaints against Burlington schools from other parents with concerns about the survey's content and the district's mishandling of the opt-out requests. Advertisement He said even though the survey is administered as part of the federal data collection process and under the oversight of the state's education agency, districts have the discretion to adjust the survey for its specific student populations. 'I don't think I've ever seen one this graphic in the questions, and certainly we've never seen a school district not comply with parental opt-out,' he said. James Vaznis can be reached at
WIRED
21-03-2025
- Health
- WIRED
Researchers Rush to Save US Government Data on Trans Youth—Before It Disappears
Mar 21, 2025 5:30 AM In the face of the Trump administration's anti-trans efforts, researchers and volunteers around the world are backing up federally-funded studies, and vowing to keep the resources online. On a Friday afternoon in mid-March, a bunch of (presumably) non-hackers showed up to participate in a new kind of 'hackathon.' It was Pi Day, so pie was served, but the mood wasn't celebratory. Students, researchers, and members of the wider public health community were there, in a lecture hall at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and on Zoom, to rescue data. Whatever they could. According to the flier for the Preserving Public Health Data Hackathon, the current Trump administration was trying to undermine research on everything from climate change to systemic racism, and saving data from government websites meant it would be archived and republished in the event federal agencies tried to remove it. The antiauthoritarian theme came up often: don't obey in advance. Everyone in the room and on the Zoom got a crash course in identifying at-risk information, collecting it, and storing it once they did. Backing up certain pieces seemed critical. For those who work in public health, protecting research pertaining to gender identity and diversity issues has been a focus since the inauguration. Last year, then-candidate Trump repeated a lot of anti-trans rhetoric on the campaign trail, and in the first weeks of his presidency signed executive orders essentially barring transgender people from serving in the military, proclaiming that the US government would only recognize 'two genders, male and female,' threatening to withhold federal funds in what is an attempt to bar trans women from sports, and attempting to block gender-affirming care for people under the age of 19. Since Trump's inauguration, hundreds of words—from 'transgender' to 'Latinx' to 'accessible'—have been removed from federal agencies' websites. In early February, thousands of websites went missing as agencies raced to comply with the executive orders. In recent weeks, the targeting of gender-related material has become even starker, after Trump told a joint session of Congress that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had uncovered that the federal government had spent $8 million on 'making mice transgender' (it hasn't), and the Department of Defense performed a purge of 'DEI' materials that included flagging, but ultimately not removing, images of the Enola Gay. One particular dataset, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (commonly shortened to YRBS), seems particularly at-risk, notes Ariel Beccia, an epidemiologist at the Chan School's LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence. The YRBS, which tracks scores of health-related issues in young people, is one of the only nationally representative surveys that regularly collects data on transgender kids. Beccia and other public health researchers fear the information in the YRBS may not be available forever. And even if the YRBS can be backed up, the integrity of its data can't be completely protected from the influence of the new administration. President Trump's recent moves have also left some in public service afraid to participate in new research, like this year's survey. 'Because of this 'comply in advance' strategy, school boards are hesitant to participate in the YRBS,' Beccia told attendees at the hackathon. Beccia would know. Her research focuses on race and ethnicity as well as LGBTQ+ young people. She's recently been looking into LGTBQ+ inequities in eating disorders. Her work relies on YRBS data. Now that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which hosts the survey's results, has reportedly stopped processing data on trans Americans, and fewer schools are participating, the data Beccia uses, even if it stays online, will be incomplete. When asked about this, CDC spokesperson Melissa Dibble confirmed that, in compliance with Trump's executive orders, 'the transgender identity question was removed from the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey,' but no other changes were made. Dibble added that the change shouldn't delay the survey's results. It's created a 'double whammy' situation, Beccia says, where government employees are trying to comply with Trump's executive orders and school districts are afraid to participate in any study related to gender or LGBTQ+ health, even if it is data that in turn guides how they run their schools. 'We are living through a pretty scary time with the administration,' Beccia tells me a few days after the event. 'This is obviously impacting the mental health of everyone in the country, especially queer and trans people and queer and trans youth, and we're not going to have data on this.' The YRBS is just one of many datasets researchers have sought to shore up in a long-running effort to preserve government-funded information as the new administration takes control. The University of Washington Information School held 'Data Rescue' events in January aimed at collecting climate crisis information. The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), a network of research professionals that launched a tool during Trump's first term to track changes to environmental information on federal websites, relaunched that tracker at the beginning of March. The Data Rescue Project, a consortium of data-rescue organizations, lists dozens of ways people can get involved if they want to help collect. A group of archivists has recreated the pre-Inauguration Day version of the CDC website and is now hosting it in Europe at Other organizations are also looking to back up the YRBS, too. On January 30, soon after Trump signed the first of his executive orders aimed at trans Americans, Libby Hemphill, director of the Resource Center for Minority Data at The Inter-University Consortium of Political and Social Research (ICPSR), started getting calls. Word had gotten out that the CDC might be scrubbing data, including the YRBS, and people wanted to know how to stop it. Hemphill gathered some colleagues and started scraping it. Then there were requests for data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), from the Department of Education, from the National Institutes of Health. Much like the data-preservation effort at the Chan School, Hemphill and her team coordinated ways for people to submit data they wanted to preserve and ways for researchers to collect it and store it. The ICPSR runs a repository known as DataLumos, where a lot of the preservation efforts are backing up their collections. When I ask Hemphill if she's worried about the safety of the information in the DataLumos archive, she says 'it's absolutely something that we think about,' adding, 'I can assure you that ICPSR has a non-US physical, non-US regulatory plan for data preservation.' If you think this sounds familiar, you're not wrong. When Trump assumed the presidency in 2017, scientists, archivists, and librarians at the University of Pennsylvania raced to save data published by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and NOAA. Another group in Michigan, also fearing the EPA and NOAA websites would lose valuable information, made a similar move. Websites were backed up to the Internet Archive; large datasets were 'bagged' for safe keeping. At the time, the researchers weren't sure the incoming administration would seek to erase any info. It was more like a hunch, one that proved prescient when, then being led by Trump appointee and agency administrator Scott Pruitt, the EPA began removing climate change information from its website in April 2017, 'to reflect the approach of new leadership.' Between 2017 and 2021, more than 1,400 pages related to climate change on government web sites were altered or made less accessible, according to data compiled by the EDGI. That, notes Gretchen Gehrke, who leads EDGI's website monitoring program, is not 'a comprehensive list of changes,' since some alterations—like removing 'Climate Change' from the navigation page of get counted once but affect several other pages. 'I think there is a lot more awareness about the precarity of federal information after having experienced the first Trump administration,' Gehrke says. 'Watching the Trump campaign become truly obsessed with trans people, and knowing the Trump administration's history of information suppression, people were and are rightly concerned that that information is at risk.' Which is why Beccia is concerned. Datasets like those in the YRBS are few and far between and losing it could be disastrous to those wanting to know about the health and well-being of trans youth in America. Although the YRBS is currently live on the CDC's website, it did briefly disappear, along with data on the Food and Drug Administration and Department of Health and Human Services web sites, earlier this year following an order from the Office of Personnel Management that it be scrubbed to comply with Trump's executive orders. The information returned in mid-February when US District Judge John Bates, responding to a lawsuit from Doctors for America, granted a temporary restraining order and the site was reinstated. A disclaimer at the top of the YRBS page now says 'any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate,' adding 'this page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the administration and this department rejects it.' Tazlina Mannix worked for the YRBS program in Alaska from 2015 until 2023, both as survey coordinator and data manager. She notes that even if the CDC keeps the data online, disclaimers like the one on the site now make it harder for researchers to do their work. Collecting public health data relies on relationships with people in health departments and school districts. Giving those people any reason to hesitate can 'set you back to zero,' she says. 'When I first saw [that disclaimer], I was so horrified. The language is so extreme, and it's also just wrong.'
