Blair County is participating in the second annual National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy on Wednesday, May 7.
\nThe message of the National Day is straightforward, teens need to think about the importance of postponing pregnancy and parenthood until they are adults, and they should make a personal commitment to do so.
\nAcross the United States, the National Day is sponsored by the nonprofit National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. In addition, more than 140 prominent national organizations have signed on as National Day partners.
\n\u201cEven though the United States teen pregnancy rate is down, it\u2019s the highest in the western world,\u201d said program manager of Teen Link Connection program, Kathy Gregg.
\nOn the local front, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Team has been created. This is a team of schools, social service agencies, former teen mothers, parents, college professors, and media all across Blair County dedicated to bringing about awareness of the issues of teen pregnancy and ways to prevent it.
\n\u201cThe reason we became interested in the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy in Blair County is because we\u2019ve known for years that the Blair County teen pregnancy rate is very high in the state,\u201d said Gregg. \u201cIn fact we are seventh out of 67 counties. That\u2019s looking at the big cities and rural areas.\u201d
\nIn fact in Blair County, one out of nine births are to teen parents, which is well above the national average.
\n\u201cDefinitely there is a high teen pregnancy rate in Tyrone. I\u2019ve worked with some of the teen moms myself,\u201d said Gregg.
\nThe Teen Pregnancy Prevention Team of Blair County is only in its beginning stages. This year it is able to collaborate with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy to sponsor an online effort to get teens to stop, think, and decide what they will do to avoid teen pregnancy.
\nOn Wednesday, May 7 teens can go online to www.teenpregancy.org and take a short, scenario-based quiz that asks young people what the best thing to do is in a number of sexual situations.
\n\u201cThe National Day quiz serves as a concrete activity to help teens break through the \u2018it won\u2019t happen to me\u2019 wall of denial,\u201d said director of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Sarah Brown.
\nThe reason the quiz is online is because more and more teens use the Internet and have easy access to it. Also, the quiz can be forwarded to their friends through e-mails and instant messaging.
\nHowever, another way that teens can learn about teen pregnancy is by talking with their parents or guardians. Parents can stress the importance of decision making to their children and answer any questions the teens might have.
\n\u201cThey still say that parents talking to teens is one of the biggest factors to preventing teen pregnancy,\u201d said Gregg. \u201cParents make the biggest difference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blair County is participating in the second annual National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy on Wednesday, May 7. The message of the National Day is straightforward, teens need to think about the importance of postponing pregnancy and parenthood until they are adults, and they should make a personal commitment to do so. Across the United […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}