Thursday, April 06, 2000
Teen births in city down 29% since '93
But infant mortality rises
BY TIM BONFIELD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Teen births in Cincinnati have declined 29 percent since 1993, according to a report Wednesday from the Postponing Sexual Involvement (PSI) program.
The report looks at births at five central-city hospitals to girls ages 12-16 who live within the ZIP codes served by the Cincinnati Public Schools. It found:
• A drop in teen births, from 391 in 1993 to 276 in 1999.
• A 48 percent drop in births among 15-year-olds, from 125 in 1993 to 65 in 1999.
• Nationally, the birth rate among 10- to 14-year-olds fell 27 percent from 1994 to 1998, the PSI group reported.
Postponing Sexual Involvement is a program launched in 1992 by Children's Hospital Medical Center and the Cincinnati Public Schools. It features fellow teens talking about the risks and consequences of early sexu al activity. The idea is to get teen “leaders” to show that it is possible to skip sex and still be cool.
“While the PSI program cannot claim credit for this dramatic trend, it would be reasonable to infer that PSI is among the many factors responsible for the decline in births to young teens,” said program coordinator, Christopher Kraus in a prepared statement.
However, reductions in teen pregnancy have not been matched by reductions in infant mortality in Greater Cincinnati. Traditionally, high rates of teen pregnancy have been cited as a key factor in high infant mortality rates.
Local deaths of babies before age 1 continue to exceed national averages and actually went up in 1998, making infant mortality one of the biggest problems cited in The Cincinnati Enquirer's sixth annual Tristate Child Index, published Feb. 27.
The region's infant mortality rate jumped from 7.5 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1997 to 8.4 deaths in 1998, reversing a four-year decline. The Tristate's infant death rate is 17 percent worse than the 7.2 rate nationwide.
The index did not have 1999 data for infant mortality.
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