Teenage Pregnancy - Public Health Challenges

Running head: TEENAGE PREGNANCY
TEENAGE PREGNANCY
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TEENAGE PREGNANCY1
One of the major public health challenges in recent times has been teen pregnancy.
Currently, teen birth rates have seen a decline remarkably in the United States since the most
recent ultimate in the early 1990s. Although majority of the youth population lead healthy
and well developing life, there can be a good reason for optimism in several areas of
adolescent health conditions (Solomon-Fears & Ronquillo, 2015). However, several
teenagers have been experiencing preventable behavioural as well as mental health issues
such as substance abuse, damages, obesity and other challenges. The following paper aims to
highlight reasons to which several adolescent girls experience unintended pregnancies. In
addition to this, it will focus on certain consequences of teenage pregnancy and to what
extent sex education programs draw success.
As per report of Youth Risk Behaviour Surveillance System of 2013, several high
school students continue to involve in sexual risk behavioural patterns which tend to result in
unintended pregnancies as well as sexually transmitted infections (Kappeler, 2015).
Furthermore, another reason to which high school adolescent girls tend to have sexual
intercourse and nearly one out of eight adolescent girls are likely to become pregnant before
they reach adulthood.
Teenage pregnancy has been explained as a self-perpetuating cycle in which early
childbirth in one generation elevates the propensity of the next generation to be experiencing
challenges of adolescent pregnancy. However, irrespective of the reasons for any ubiquity
being of adolescent maternal age tend to result in other consequences as well as risks towards
the pregnancy not specifically pertaining to the newborn but further to health conditions to
mother. As per Cook and Cameron (2015), maternal anaemia is usually experienced in
pregnancy especially pregnant teenage girls tend to have shown increased rates of anaemia as
compared to adult pregnant women. Furthermore, to throw light on reasons for which teenage
maternal age tend to associate with an elevated risk for complications during pregnancy with