Birth Rate Among Minnesota Teens, STIs Among All State Residents Increase, Reports Find

Main Category: Pregnancy / Obstetrics
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health;  Sexual Health / STDs
Article Date: 02 Apr 2008 - 8:00 PDT

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The birth rate among teenagers in Minnesota increased 7% from 2005 to 2006, according to a report released Thursday by the Minnesota Organization on Adolescent Pregnancy, Prevention and Parenting, or MOAPPP, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports. The birth rate among teens ages 17 and younger increased 10%, according to the report (Olson, St. Paul Pioneer Press, 3/29). Minnesota reported 27.9 births per every 1,000 female teens ages 15 to 19 (MOAPPP report, March 2008). The increase follows a two-decade decline in teen births in the state.

Teen births were most common in immigrant families from Africa, Asia and Central America, the report found. Although the teen birth rate in the state is two to five times higher among minority teens, the rate also increased among white teens in 2006, according to the report. According to health experts, if the new data represent an upward trend, social and cultural changes could be responsible for the increase.

According to the Pioneer Press, the increase in teen births coincides with increases in sexual activity, abortions and the number of sexually transmitted infections among teenagers (St. Paul Pioneer Press, 3/29). A separate report released last week by the Minnesota Department of Health found that the number of people living with an STI in the state increased 3.8% from 2006 to 2007, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. The report said that improved STI testing that has allowed more cases to be diagnosed and treated could partly explain the increase.

More than 17,000 people statewide contracted chlamydia, gonorrhea or syphilis in 2007, the state health department report found. Chlamydia infections increased 3.7% from 2006 to 2007. The increase among blacks was 5.2%. According to the Star Tribune, experts attributed the higher rates to poverty and a lack of health care.

In addition, the report found that STIs are increasing among teens as more report being sexually active. About 50% of high school seniors and 75% of college students in the state said they were sexually active, according to the report (Marcotty, Minneapolis Star Tribune, 3/30). Gonorrhea and chlamydia increased 21% among teens in the state from 2001 to 2006, the Pioneer Press reports (St. Paul Pioneer Press, 3/29).

The Minnesota Legislature is considering a bill that would allow physicians to provide additional antibiotics to women with chlamydia to give to their male partners to reduce the spread of the infection. According to the Star Tribune, a bill in the state Legislature that would have provided $1.3 million for STI screening and education failed last week. A separate bill in the Legislature would require public schools in the state to provide sex education to seventh- through 12th-grade students that focuses on abstinence but also provides information about contraception and STIs (Minneapolis Star Tribune, 3/30).

The MOAPPP report is available online (.pdf).

The Minnesota Health Department report also is available online.

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