Pulse Check: Teen Health in America

The Center for Disease Control recently released its annual report on the health of America's younger citizens. From that report the section on the health of teens shows some interesting trends.

Nine percent of American children have asthma but the number in Caucasian children is much less. Black children have a 13 percent incidence of asthma; children of Hispanic origin have a 26 percent rate.

Smoking in bell weather grade eight declines to 3 percent and is down from 4 percent in 2005. This is one of the positive indicators in the teen health report. Ten years earlier, in 1996 the rate of smoking teens was 10 percent in eighth graders.

Teens in the twelve month period were less likely to have accidents and those that were in accidents were less likely to die from them. One disturbing indicator shows that the number of youthful crime offenders from age 12 to 17 has increased.

Drug use steady but still too high as data on 10th, 11th and 12th graders who reported using illegal drugs in the last month was statistically unchanged over data from the previous year.

Teen Pregnancies rose from 2005 to 2006. This rise is the first time since 1991 teach pregnancies rose when comparing twelve month periods. It's too early to tell if this is indicative of a trend. If there is a trend it remains to be determined if the trend is increased sex among teenagers, or less use of contraceptives. Although this data is for a twelve month period from 2005 to 2006 health officials worry about future results because of a series of high profile teen pregnancies in the last twelve months.

A disturbing trend is noted in that pregnant teens are less likely to have proper prenatal care. They are also less likely to gain the proper amount of weight and more likely to start or increase smoking during the pregnancy. All these things are threatening to the life of the unborn child and as a result the mother. Birth weights of children from teens are more likely to be under the national average.

In 2005 there were 25 pregnancies per 1,000 teenage girls. In 2006 that number rose to 26 per 1,000. This data is from the CDD in Atlanta. One third of girls who got pregnant in 2006 were under the age of twenty. There were 435,000 babies born to teens between ages 15 and 19 years of age in 2006.