Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Teen birth rates highest in Las Vegas’ poorest neighborhoods

teen pregnancy

Leila Navidi

Teen birth rates in some of Las Vegas’ most economically depressed neighborhoods are quadruple the national average and more than 13 times higher than in the valley’s most affluent regions, according to data released by the Southern Nevada Health District.

Health officials worked with data visualization firm Gnomon to produce a map of teen birth rates that reveals that the areas served by some of Las Vegas’ poorest high schools — including Desert Pines, Western and Mojave — had teen birth rates ranging from 109 to 119 per 1,000 total births in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available.

The national average for that year was 26.6 teen mothers per every 1,000 births.

By contrast, the areas served by the valley’s most affluent public high schools — including Palo Verde and Coronado, located in Summerlin and Henderson — had rates of 8.58 and 7.87 teen mothers per every 1,000 births, respectively — among the lowest in the county.

Overall, teen birth rates have fallen dramatically across the United States since the early 1990s, but there are still geographic pockets — including Southern Nevada — with stubbornly high rates, said Katherine Suellentrop, senior director of state support at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. She cites a combination of high poverty, low graduation rates, uninsured or underinsured populations and lack of community resources.

“It’s often in communities that have other challenges,” Suellentrop said.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the teen birth rate in Nevada is near the national median, but the study did not look specifically at impoverished teen mothers, though it did find that in all states, two-thirds of unwed teenage mothers are poor. A recent study by economists from the University of Maryland and Wellesley found that poor teens living in states with more income inequality were more likely to become pregnant than those living in relatively egalitarian states. In 2015, an Economic Policy Institute study found that Nevada has the third-most unequal distribution of income of all states in the country.

Local health officials hope the maps will increase awareness about the problem, said Suzann Chesebrough-Pruitt, community health nurse supervisor for the health district.

In recent years, with funding from a federal grant, the health district has set a goal of reducing Clark County’s birth rate by 10 percent of its 2010 rate by 2015. It’s unclear whether the district has hit that goal, however, since their data only runs to 2013.

“There’s a lot of people working really hard at this,” Chesebrough-Pruitt said.

But a recent evaluation by the Nevada Institute for Children’s Research and Policy found that the district’s sexual health curriculum — which includes information on sexually transmitted disease prevention, birth control and healthy relationships — had met with only mixed success.

In July, the health district received a nearly $750,000 federal grant to continue its work and expand its teen pregnancy prevention programs, Chesebrough-Pruitt said. A community advisory board and a youth council will be formed to elicit feedback. The health district also plans to bolster its curriculum, improve programs for LGBT youth and make its family-planning clinics more friendly and welcoming to teens, she said.

One difficulty facing Clark County is the lack of comprehensive sex education at schools, Chesebrough-Pruitt said. Critics of the sex-ed curriculum say it doesn’t provide students with accurate information about sex and STDs, nor does it include information about homosexuality and gender identification.

The Clark County School Board voted in July to delay a review of the sex-ed curriculum until September. Nevada is an opt-in state, meaning parents must sign forms allowing their children to be present for sex education.

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