Sex Ed Does Delay Teen Sex: CDC

THURSDAY, Dec. 20 (HealthDay News) -- Sex education programs dowork to help discourage many teens from becoming sexually active beforeage 15, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers forDisease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Formal programs -- such as those presented in schools and churchgroups -- did appear to delay onset of sexual activity. For example, teengirls in the nationally representative sample were 59 percent less likelyto start having sex before age 15 if they had received sex education,while teen boys were 71 percent less likely, the study found.
"We were obviously hoping to find that sex education is effective.We're glad to see the strong associations," said lead author TrishaMueller, a CDC epidemiologist. She emphasized that in order to besuccessful, sex education should take place before young people becomesexually active.
Mueller's team also learned that teen boys who attended school werealmost three times more likely to use contraception if they had attended asex education program, compared to those who had not.
However, attendance at a sex education class did not seem to impactgirls' use of birth control, the survey found.
The survey did not differentiate between programs that emphasizedabstinence and those that educated about contraception. Instead,researchers focused only on whether the teens had ever attended any sexeducation program in a formal setting, such as school or church.
The study was expected to be published in the January issue of theJournal of Adolescent Health.
According to earlier, 2005 data available from the CDC, 47 percent ofhigh school students said they had already had sex. Of those who werecurrently involved in a sexual relationship, one-third said they were notusing a condom.
Curious about the effectiveness of sexual education on these behaviors,Mueller and colleagues examined data from more than 2,000 teen boys andgirls between 15 and 19 years of age who participated in the door-to-door2002 National Survey of Family Growth.
"Formal sex education is beneficial for youth who are considered to beat-risk," noted Mueller, who cited as an example the 88 percent reducedrisk of initiation sex before age 15 among urban black females who hadreceived any sex education. Urban black teen girls who were still inschool at the time of the survey had a 91 percent reduced risk ofinitiation sex before age 15, the survey found.
The research also showed that boys living in single-parent householdswere more likely to delay sex past age 15 if they had attended a sexeducation class.
Mueller and her team were interested in teen sexual decision-makingbefore and after the age of 15, because the federal governments' HealthyPeople 2010 initiative treats 15 as a dividing line. Healthy People 2010sets a wide array of health goals for states and communities to achieveover the first decade of this century. One of its objectives: to reducethe number of teens under age 15 who are having sex for the first time.
"First and foremost, the report makes clear that the timing of sexeducation is quite important. That is, providing sex education to youngpeople at an early age seems quite important in helping delay sexualactivity," said Bill Albert, deputy director of the Washington, D.C.-basedNational Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
The researchers said the study could not explain why sex educationmight have a stronger effect in delaying sex among teen boys and blackgirls, but Albert offered an explanation.
"It is the case that declines in sexual activity among teen boys, asopposed to girls, and African-American teen girls, as opposed to otherracial/ethnic groups, have been much more dramatic over the past decade.This may, in part, explain why the effect of sex education seems stronger.It may also be that concern about HIV/AIDs may be particularly strongamong these two groups," said Albert.
However, certain sub-populations of teens deserve further research,said Mueller. The data suggested that both rural, white teen girls andwhite or Hispanic teen girls who had dropped out of school might bemore likely to have sex before age 15 if they had sex education,but Mueller said the number of people in those groups in the study was sosmall that the results could be a statistical fluke.
"They were kind of opposite findings," said Mueller, who acknowledgedthat "some subgroups may not benefit from sex ed the same way as thelarger group of teens."
This research comes in the wake of data released Dec. 5 by the CDCshowing that the annual rate of births to teens has increased for thefirst time in 14 years. Between 2005 and 2006, the birth rate for girls 15to 19 rose 3 percent -- from 40.5 births per 1,000 in 2005 to 41.9 per1,000 in 2006.
Considering both studies, Albert said, "The early wins may have beenwon. Future efforts may well have to be more intense, focused, andcreative if the nation is to make continued progress in reducing teenpregnancy and childbearing. Put another way, yesterday's way of doingbusiness will no longer suffice."