Additionally, the higher you progress through a field, the more kudos you can make. Consider Geoponics, for example. The entry-level job, shoveling dirt, pays five kudos. Mid-level jobs, like working on the farm and tending to the animals, pay ten kudos. Finally, studying xebotany, an expert-level job, pays fifteen kudos. These salaries are regardless of card challenge performance.
Teens are deluged with images about sex. On TV alone, it is estimated that the average teen sees 14,000 sexual messages each year, less than 1% of which deal with sexual responsibility or consequences, according to a definitive study by Planned Parenthood. Unfortunately, thousands of teens face the very real consequences of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) every day.
DePo teen minus
By the 12th grade, nearly two-thirds of U.S. high school students have had sexual intercourse, and approximately one-quarter have had four or more sex partners, according to a report done in recent years by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet almost half of sexually active teens did not use a condom the last time they had sex, the report said.
Risk-taking, living for the moment and sexuality itself are normal aspects of adolescence, which can also place teens at risk for STDs. The long-term consequences of STDs seem remote, and are obscured by the more immediate wish to explore sex and experience intimacy. Normal adolescent insecurity over being liked and desired by peers can inhibit a teen from asking a partner to use a condom or from talking about STDs.
No teen needs to suffer from an STD. Besides practicing safer sex and getting STD tests, teens should realize that putting off sexual involvement is a viable option: After all, in 12th grade, more than one-third of high school students have never had sex. But both teens and parents need to remember that there will come a time when children grow up and have sex for the first time. Will they know enough about STDs? Will they know how to use a condom? Will they be able to talk about these issues with a partner? By facing up to the facts about teen sexuality, we can make it a much safer world to grow up in.
Objective To examine weight changes in a large cohort of obese and nonobese adolescent girls initiating depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA), an oral contraceptive (OC), or no hormonal contraceptive method (control).
For the first time in recent decades, national statistics have provided some encouraging news about teen pregnancy rates. They are dropping! It is not a huge drop, and we cannot yet say whether these lower rates will be sustained (or better yet, whether the decline will continue). But at this point, the data clearly demonstrate a reduction in teen pregnancy rates.
What is not so encouraging is the rush to ascribe or claim credit for these results based on some evidence that is available. Such prominent agencies as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Population Affairs at HHS, the National Adolescent Reproductive Health Partnership, the Centers for Disease Control and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPF) have all interpreted the national data to mean that contraceptive policies and practices account for the drop in teen pregnancies. The following quotes illustrate the popular and prevailing explanation for the recent trends:
Some agencies attribute the drop in teen pregnancy to both an increase in contraceptive use and a decrease in sexual activity rates among teens. All of them, however, want to credit the use of contraceptives for at least part of the decline. What is the evidence that leads so many groups to the same conclusion? Is the data really that clear, that compelling? If it is clear, then how do we explain this sudden success after years of failure?
A more thorough analysis of the data reveals another striking element. What appears to be a decline in teen pregnancy rates as shown in Figure 1 is somewhat misleading because it combines the married and unmarried teens. And for the unmarried teens, it also combines the sexually active teens with the not sexually active teens. These combinations confound the data to the point that they become uninterpretable, let alone amenable to causal claims such as
How then do we explain the drop in overall teen pregnancy rates, if the change in contraceptive use fails to account for that drop? The other trend in national statistics which has caught the attention of even the popular media is the change in sexual activity rates. For the first time in recent decades, the trend of increasing numbers of teens engaging in premarital sex has reversed. Data from similar time periods (1988 to 1995) from the National Survey of Family Growth, the National Survey of Adolescent Males and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey all report a clear and consistent trend. More adolescents are abstaining from sexual activity in recent years, and there are now more teens (15-19) who are not having sex as compared with those who are. Figure 4 illustrates this trend. Figure 4 data comes from the National Survey of Family Growth (for females) and the National Survey of Adolescent Males.
The data from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey also shows an overall decline in sexual activity rates, but that data indicates more change is due to a decrease for males than for females. In any event, there is a decline in the percentage of 15-19 year old adolescents who have ever had sex. We also see an overall decline in those who have had sex in the past three months, and in the number of partners they have ever had. What once appeared to be an inevitable increase in sexual activity rates each year has now changed direction toward more abstinent behavior. If we are looking for a plausible explanation to account for decreasing teen pregnancy rates, the change in sexual activity is certainly more viable than the argument being made that the drop in teen pregnancies is a function of increased condom use.
The shift towards abstinent behavior is likely the result of multiple factors and forces operating simultaneously, including awareness and concern about AIDS and other STDs. Not to be ignored in this shift, however, is the large increase in the number of teens exposed each year to programs that promote abstinence as their central message. These programs have multiplied dramatically and account for a twelve-fold increase since 1986 in the number of teens exposed to a clear and direct message each year about sexual abstinence. I am not aware of any other factor that might account for the shift towards abstinent behavior. Certainly the media has become more, rather than less, prevalent and provocative with its messages regarding premarital and extra marital sex.
The number of abstinence-centered sexuality education programs has increased dramatically in recent years. The recent welfare reform act (Title V) has generated new interest in abstinence education and made new program funds available through block grants to states. Many existing programs have evolved, become more sophisticated, more theory driven, more intensive and of longer duration. And as pointed out earlier, more and more teens are involved as program participants each year. While this expansion and evolution of abstinence programs is occurring, efforts to measure impact and effectiveness have lagged behind. Very little funding has been available for extensive evaluation efforts, and those programs which are evaluated often change components or elements in order to respond to what has been learned in the evaluation. This results in a moving target for evaluation efforts. All of this puts the field of abstinence education in a state of flux at present. That is not a criticism, but merely a comment on the current condition.
Stan Weed, Ph.D. (in Social Psychology) is a widely published researcher and former professor. He has been a partner/co-founder of the Institute for Research and Evaluation (Salt Lake City) since 1985, focusing primarily on teen pregnancy, AIDS prevention and character education curricula.
This study, which was conducted in Cairo, Egypt, with first-time users of the IUD, the hormonal implant and the depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) three-month injectable, was designed to improve understanding of the role that the menstrual side effects of contraceptive methods play in women's decisions to discontinue use of those methods.
It is probably wise for teens to avoid Depo if they have a personal history of amenorrhea (no flow for three or more months), or a close relative (mother, grandfather or sister) who had a broken bone without a major fall. (Note: For more life cycle specific information about preventing bone loss click here.)
When you start noticing stretchy mucus about the middle of the month, this means your estrogen levels are recovering. Now you can actively start working on becoming pregnant, if this is your desire. You will take the progesterone for two weeks or fourteen days but start checking for your urinary LH peak (with a fertility kit you can buy over the counter) in the evening when you notice stretchy vaginal mucus. Only begin the progesterone after you see the LH peak (a positive test) or after the stretchy mucus decreases. The reason is that if you take the progesterone too early it could suppress that necessary LH peak.
My osteoporosis support group members laughed at the absurdity of asking a women chosing depo (quite likely because she didnt want to take a daily birth control pill) to now take 3 pills per day (calcium + 2 Vit D)to ward off bone loss.A patient in the pharmacy where I work had digestive disorders and annovulation for 2 years post depo; she could not afford supplements and was forced to rely on drug treatments for her symptoms that were covered by the province. Being one of the thin, young, stressed variety Jerilynn describes, she is now sickly with malabsorption issues which increase her risk of osteoporosis and other chronic conditions.I agree that she has the right to choose depo, but in my opinion, public health nurses have work to do in the informed consent department when reviewing the birth control options. I understand that their job is to reduce unplanned pregnancies and depo is cheap, but at what cost to the individual and ultimately to the health care system burdened with treating side effects and managing long term risk? 2ff7e9595c
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