Irresponsible Teen Sexual Behavior

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Major Initiatives

The CDC Initiative, Healthy Youth, addresses many factors in the arena of risky behaviors among youth. Adolescent health, school health, sexual risk behavior, and youth risk behavior surveillance are a few. The initiatives goal is to promote the health and well-being of children and adolescents to enable them to become healthy and productive adults (CDC, 2012). The [c]CDC provides training materials to institute their program in schools focusing on promoting health and academic success. The CDC addresses HIV, other STDs, and teen pregnancy through data collection and analysis, science based guidance and by providing funding to states and local departments of education as well as nongovernmental agencies to promote the health and well-being of youth. These programs are aimed at factors contributing to risky sexual behavior. For example, San Diego has implemented a program that increased condom use amongst sexually active teens. Florida cities have provided training to the teachers of sexual education to better equip them to relay information to students. Successfully implemented programs can share their success stories and tips for how they were able to be successful.

In order for programs to be successful, they need to not only address the problem of risky sexual behavior itself, but the factors that contribute to the problem. There are individual factors (acceptance and self-esteem issues), family factors (economic, emotional, strong relationships) and community factors. [d]As clinicians and parents we know that the well-being of our youth is largely determined by their social environment which provides them with opportunity and choices for behaviors that compromise their health (Chen, 2007).

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References[e]

Buhi, Eric R. & Goodson, Patricia (2007). Predictors of Adolescent Sexual Behavior and Intention: A Theory-Guided Systematic Review. J Adolesc Health. 2007 Jan ;40(1):4-21.

Chen, Angela Chia-Chen & Thompson, Elaine (2007). Preventing Adolescent Risky Sexual Behavior: Parents Matter! J Spec Pediatr Nurs. 2007 Apr; 12(2):119-22.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. www.cdc.org, Accessed November 4, 2012.

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