Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health articles from September 2002

Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health archives from September 2002

In this issue.
September 1, 2002... Statistics tell us much about the occurrence of abortion in the United States: Each year over the past couple of decades, more than 20 of every 1,000 U.S. women between the ages of 15 and 44 had an abortion, and the rate declined throughout the...

Norplant: no problem ... except that it's off the market. (FYI).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Updating a two-year old advisory on the provision and use of Norplant contraceptive implants, the manufacturer of the device has announced some good news and some not-so-good news. (1) In 2000, amid concerns about the effectiveness of the...

Big changes in Japan. (FYI).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Marriage is occurring later than ever before in Japan, premarital childbearing has reached unprecedented levels and the pace of change is accelerating. (1) According to a government report, women's median age at marriage rose by one year (from...

No pill--breast cancer link. (FYI).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Neither current nor former pill use increases the risk of breast cancer among women aged 35-64, who have the highest incidence of the disease. (1) In a population-based study of nearly 5,000 women with breast cancer and a similar number of...

Minnesota is the place for kids. (FYI).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Minnesota ranks top in the nation on a composite measure of 10 key indicators of children's well-being, and Mississippi occupies the bottom slot. (1) The measure combines information on low birth weight; infant and child mortality; teenage...

Their lips are sealed. (FYI).(parental knowledge of teenage sexual behavior)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Thirty-seven percent of sexually active 15-17-year-olds in a nationwide survey said that their parents do not know that they are having sex, and 20% said that their parents know but not because they have told them. (1) Overall, roughly 50-60%...

With this ring ... (FYI).(NuvaRing, a new vaginal contraceptive)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... A vaginal ring that offers hormonal contraceptive protection on a monthly basis is now available on the U.S. market. (1) The Nuva-Ring, a small, flexible device that women themselves insert into the vagina, releases a continuous flow of...

Nipping obesity in the bud. (FYI).(lower obesity risk in breast-fed infants)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Infants who are exclusively breastfed are less likely than those who are fed only formula to be obese in early childhood, according to findings from a Scottish study of children born in 1995-1996. (1) Overall, 9% of the more than 32,000...

Is anybody out there listening? (FYI).(health education media coverage)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Only 45% of adults surveyed in June and July said they had followed news stories about the effects of hormone replacement therapy on women's health; fewer than 40% of the 1,208 respondents had followed stories about recent findings on the...

The perils of parental notification. (FYI).(teens would stop using sexual health services if their parents knew)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... More than half of teenagers younger than 18 who participated in a survey conducted at Planned Parenthood clinics throughout Wisconsin in 1999 would discontinue use of at least some of the agency's services if their parents were notified that...

Patterns in the socioeconomic characteristics of women obtaining abortions in 2000-2001. (Articles).(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... Abortion is a common experience among U.S. women. (1) Nevertheless, because abortion is a sensitive topic for many people, it is commonly underreported in national surveys, (2) and representative information about women who have abortions is...

Association of early childbearing and low cognitive ability.(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... During 1998, U.S. women aged 15-19 had an estimated one million pregnancies and nearly a half million live births. (1) Despite some success in reducing the incidence of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing in the United States, early...

Preventing pregnancy and improving health care access among teenagers: an evaluation of the Children's Aid Society--Carrera program.(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... Despite recent declines, the United States still has one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates among industrialized nations. (1) While a growing number of programs have improved contraceptive prevalence or affected sexuality-related behaviors,...

Family characteristics and sexual risk behaviors among black men in the United States. (Research Note).(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2002... Each year, there are approximately 12 million new cases of sexually transmitted disease (STD) in the United States. (1) STD prevalence is higher among blacks than among whites or Asians and Pacific Islanders--for some STDs, by as much as 30%....

Legal and ethical considerations in research with sexually active adolescents: the requirement to report statutory rape. (Comment).
September 1, 2002... Encouraged by congressional action, state legislators in the mid-1990s began strengthening and enforcing statutory rape laws in an effort to lower teenage pregnancy rates and welfare costs. One approach has been to classify statutory rape as...

30 years ago in perspectives.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... In the October 1972 issue of Perspectives, researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health published the first of two articles presenting data from the nation's first survey of sexual and contraceptive knowledge, attitudes...

Five years after their own or their husband's sterilization, few women regret the decision. (Digests).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Only a small minority of women who are protected by contraceptive sterilization express regret about that method choice, regardless of whether they or their husbands have had the surgery, according to findings from a prospective, multicenter...

Odds of perinatal death are elevated when women who have had a cesarean plan to deliver vaginally. (Digests).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Women who have had a cesarean delivery and subsequently plan a vaginal delivery have an elevated risk of having an infant who is still-born or dies within four weeks after birth, according to a retrospective cohort study conducted in Scotland....

Mother-child transmission of HIV in South Carolina halved by drug therapy. (Digests).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... The rate at which South Carolina women infected with HIV transmitted the disease to their newborns declined dramatically in the three years after the Public Health Service recommended a regimen of zidovudine therapy to reduce perinatal...

Predictors of overlapping relationships are different for men and women. (Digests).
September 1, 2002... Men are more likely than women to have overlapping sexual relationships, and having concurrent sexual partners is associated with several risk factors for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). (1) In a survey of sexually active Seattle...

Refusal to try female condom largely reflects aversion to insertion. (Digests).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Women who refuse to try inserting the female condom and women who try but experience difficulties have different profiles, suggesting that different interventions are needed to promote use in these two groups. In a clinic-based study in...

Physician attitudes may hamper assessments of patients' risk status. (Digests).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Nine in 10 primary care physicians surveyed in Pennsylvania in 1998 said that they are comfortable discussing issues related to sex with their patients, but fewer than one-third believed that their counseling helps reduce risky behavior among...

Neonatal death risk: effect of prenatal care is most evident after term birth. (Digests).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Women in the United States who do not receive prenatal care have an increased risk of experiencing a neonatal death, especially if they deliver at or after 36 weeks' gestation, according to findings from a large population-based cohort study....

Correction. (Digests).(Correction Notice)
September 1, 2002... In "Sexual Assertiveness and Adolescents' Sexual Rights," by Patricia East and Joyce Adams [2002, 34(4):212-213], the denominator for the percentages in the second sentence of the third paragraph on page 213 should have been school districts...

Pharmacy access to emergency contraception in Europe. (Letters).
September 1, 2002... We read with great interest Jane E. Boggess's viewpoint piece in the May/June issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health entitled "How Can Pharmacies Improve Access to Emergency Contraception?" [2002, 34(3): 162-165]. Over the past...