Each year, the Family and Youth Services Bureau's Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (APP) Program awards $150 million to states, tribes, and community-based organizations to teach youth sex education and healthy life skills. Our efforts, along with those of other federal, state, and local organizations, are working. The birth rate for youth ages 15 to 19 reached a historic low in 2014.
But we're not done yet.
We call attention to the nation's most vulnerable youth to prevent unplanned and repeat teen pregnancy. Although we've made progress, rates of teen births remain high among vulnerable youth:
- Native American, Hispanic, African American, and socioeconomically disadvantaged youth experience the highest rates of teen births.
- Lesbian and bisexual teens have twice the risk of unintended pregnancy as their heterosexual peers.
- Youth in foster care are more than twice as likely to ever be pregnant by age 19 as youth not in out-of-home care.
- Vulnerable youth include rural youth, pregnant and parenting youth, and youth involved in the juvenile justice system.
- Vulnerable youth become pregnant for many reasons, including lack of access to health care, lack of social support, or lack of education on pregnancy prevention.