Federal funding for teen pregnancy program

BOWLING GREEN, O.—A successful teen pregnancy prevention program has received more federal funding. Drs. Molly Laflin and Steve Horowitz, faculty members in the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at Bowling Green State University, have been awarded $248,000 from the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services for the fourth year of the five-year Sexual Health in Ohio Project (SHOP).

In addition to providing the resources for SHOP staff to recruit schools, provide teacher training workshops and assist schools in implementing the upper-elementary and middle school “Sex Can Wait” curricula, the grant will help fund studies on the long-term effect of abstinence education.

“One of the primary criticisms of abstinence education is the lack of long-term effectiveness and dosage information,” Laflin said. “This grant will allow us to provide these much-needed data. We will be able to compare the attitudes and knowledge of students who completed the ‘Sex Can Wait’ program with those of similar students who were not exposed to the curricula.”

The grant provides funding for the BGSU staff to train 70 teachers in grades five through eight to implement the curricula in their classrooms each year. To date, nearly 3,500 students have been introduced to “Sex Can Wait” through SHOP.

In both of the two initial years, students who completed the program agreed through pre- and post-tests that they learned things they did not previously know, thought more about the risks of having sex, felt they would be more sexually responsible, were more likely to remain abstinent and were better prepared to talk with their parents about sex as a result of their classroom experiences.

When results of the pre- and post-tests were compared to those of students from classrooms in similar schools where the “Sex Can Wait” curriculum was not used, the researchers noted that students who had completed the program, compared with those who had not, indicated they were significantly more knowledgeable about sexual matters, had more positive attitudes toward abstinence, demonstrated more definitive intentions to remain sexually abstinent, and said they were more comfortable talking with parents about sex.

Laflin defined “Sex Can Wait” as a skills-based program that helps young people look at who they are now (self-image/self-esteem), where they want to go with their lives (life planning), and how they can successfully make the transition from puberty to adulthood (life skills).

“’Sex Can Wait’ presents the postponement of sexual involvement as an important strategy to accomplish a successful, healthful transition,” she said. “It is designed to help pre-adolescents and young adolescents acquire knowledge and skills that will instill healthy attitudes and encourage and support the postponement of early sexual activity.”

According to Laflin, the project involves both follow-up assistance to participating schools and an extensive evaluation component through 2004. Year-three data, which are currently being analyzed, will provide follow-up information on the longer-term effectiveness of the curricula. Year four offers the opportunity to collect and compare data from students who will have taken “Sex Can Wait” when they were in upper-elementary school and again in middle school.

“Short-term effectiveness is not nearly as important as long-term effectiveness,” Laflin said, adding that currently no one knows if abstinence curricula are effective in the long term. “In the real world, students are confronted with choices that affect their health long after a curriculum has been taught.
This project offers us the opportunity to find out what works one and two years after the intervention.”

The next SHOP training for fifth- to eighth-grade teachers will be held Aug. 13-14 at BGSU. For more information about the project and the training, contact Joanne Sommers, program coordinator, at 419-372-9378, email jsommer@bgnet.bgsu.edu or visit the Web site at www.bgsu.edu/colleges/edhd/FCS/SHOP/. (Posted July 22, 2002)