Family Planning Perspectives articles from July 1999

Family Planning Perspectives archives from July 1999

Formula Feeding and the Bottom Line.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... During the first year of life, a bottle-fed infant will cost the health care system hundreds of dollars more than a breastfed infant because of the increased risk of common ailments when babies are not nursed.[1] An analysis of data on 944...

Why Women Have Late Abortions.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... More than half of women obtaining third-trimester abortions in a Paris hospital between 1986 and 1994 would not have sought a termination earlier in their pregnancy, because the fetal impairment that motivated their decision would not have been...

Teenage Pregnancy in Big Cities.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... The 50 largest cities in the United States, which account for about one-fifth of teenage births, are leading the national trend of declines in teenage childbearing, according to an analysis of vital statistics and census data.[1] Between 1991...

Things Go Better with Misoprostol.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... Medical abortion is less successful when methotrexate is used alone than when it is coupled with misoprostol, according to a study of 358 Canadian women seeking pregnancy terminations at less than seven weeks of gestation.[1] In all, 101 women...

Those Elusive Emergency Pills.
July 1, 1999... Several months after the Food and Drug Administration approved the only product specifically packaged for emergency contraception in the United States, 71% of pharmacies surveyed in Philadelphia still did not carry it.[1] Furthermore, many...

Doctors, Abortion and Attitude.(Polling Data)
July 1, 1999... A sample of 82 obstetrician-gynecologists surveyed in New York City had generally favorable attitudes toward abortion, but personal beliefs and experiences influenced both their attitude and whether they perform the procedure.[1] On a scale of...

Prenatal HIV Counseling Is Common.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... Since 1995, when the Public Health Service recommended that providers of prenatal care counsel all of their patients about HIV and encourage them to be tested for the virus, substantial proportions of pregnant women have received such...

DDT Levels in Breast Milk Fall.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... Worldwide, levels of the pesticide DDT detected in breast milk have fallen 11-14% per year since the 1970s, when countries began restricting or banning the compound's use because of its adverse effects on wildlife.[1] An analysis of the results...

Prevention of the Common Cold?
July 1, 1999... While a cure for the common cold remains beyond the reach of science, a study conducted among 111 undergraduates in a Pennsylvania college suggests that a preventive measure may have been with us all along--sex.[1] The level of immunoglobulin...

The Pill Comes to Japan!
July 1, 1999... On June 2, after nine years of deliberations, the Japanese health ministry's pharmaceutical advisory committee recommended approval of low-dose birth control pills; formal approval is expected soon.[1] The method will be available by...

Age Differences Between Sexual Partners In the United States.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... In the United States, men are generally somewhat older than their female sexual partners. Men are, on average, two years older than women at first marriage.[1] Likewise, fathers are typically older than mothers: For 44% of the births occurring...

Contraceptive Characteristics: The Perceptions And Priorities of Men and Women.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... There is convincing evidence of joint contraceptive decision-making among married couples.[1] Further, there is clear and growing evidence that a high proportion of both men and women, even those who are young and unmarried, now believe that...

Family Planning Funding Through Four Federal-State Programs, FY 1997.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... While a wide variety of federal programs support family planning services in the United States, two programs have consistently received the attention of both supporters and opponents of family planning. Medicaid (Title XIX of the Social...

Effects of a Replication of a Multicomponent Model for Preventing Adolescent Pregnancy In Three Kansas Communities.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... Annually, more than 800,000 U.S. teenagers become pregnant, one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates of any industrialized country) The majority (53%) of high school students report having had sexual intercourse. Among sexually active...

Conflicting Advice? Australian Adolescents' Use of Condoms or the Pill.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... Protecting young people from both sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and unwanted pregnancy are important public health goals. In Australia, STD surveillance data indicate that in 1996, 13-19-year-olds accounted for 20% of gonorrhea...

Couple-Friendly Services in a Metropolitan Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic: Views of Clients and Providers.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... In February 1994, the staff of the Multnomah County Health Department Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Clinic in Portland, Oregon, began discussions of couple-focused care(*) and how this concept might be put into practice in an STD clinic....

Adolescent Sexual Activity Is Affected More by Mothers' Attitudes and Behavior Than by Family Structure.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... Mothers' behavior and attitudes appear to outweigh family structure in influencing teenagers' sexual behavior. The more mothers monitor the activities of teenagers, the fewer sex partners the teenagers will have and the more consistently they...

Low Dose of Mifepristone Used Postcoitally Is Effective In Preventing Pregnancy.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... As little as 10 mg of mifepristone is effective as an emergency contraceptive treatment, even if the delay between unprotected intercourse and treatment is extended to five days. According to a recent study, the pregnancy rate among women who...

Pregnancy May End Poorly If Interval Since Last Birth Is Very Short or Very Long.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... Babies conceived within a very short time following the birth of a previous child or after a very long period of time has passed are at heightened risk of a number of poor birth outcomes, according to an analysis of data from more than 170,000...

Interactive Counseling Reduces Risky Sexual Behavior and Infections.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... Clients of public clinics who agree to participate in interactive counseling sessions have a lower risk of developing a sexually transmitted disease (STD) within the next year than clients assigned to receive the informational prevention...

Odds That a Teenager's Infant Has an Adult Father Rise Sharply if the Father Has Inadequate Level of Schooling.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... Twenty-seven percent of infants born to mothers who were younger than 15 when they became pregnant have adult fathers, according to an analysis of California birth certificate data.[1] The likelihood that a young teenager's pregnancy involved a...

Regimen Employing a Fraction of the Standard Dose Of Mifepristone Is a Successful Early Abortion Method.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... A medical abortion method using one-third the standard close of oral mifepristone followed by vaginally administered misoprostol is highly effective within the first eight weeks of pregnancy.[1] In a multicenter study of the modified regimen,...

Birth Weight Varies by Black Mothers' Place of Birth And Community's Income.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... Black women in New York City are nearly twice as likely as white women to have a low-birth-weight baby, but differences in risk among black women appear when their place of birth and current community's income level are examined. In communities...

Free Condom Provision Raises Use Among Those With Multiple Partners.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... Condom use improves among individuals at high risk for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) when condoms are widely available at no charge. In the first three years of a statewide condom social marketing program in Louisiana, the proportion of...

Correction.(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 1999... The contraceptive failure rates reported in "Contraceptive Failure Rates: New Estimates from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth," by Haishan Fu, Jacqueline E. Darroch, Taylor Haas and Nalini Ranjit [1999, 31 (2):56-63], have been...