WORKSHOP PROPOSAL

Repeat Births to Adolescents: What Are the Issues and Can We Address Them? Ann L. O’Sullivan, PhD, FAAN and Donald F. Schwarz, MD, MPH. University of Pennsylvania Schools of Nursing and Medicine and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
In the United States, almost one in five women become mothers before age 20 years. Even more striking, of the births to girls under age 20, one in five is a repeat birth. An increasing body of evidence has shown that having a single birth as an adolescent confers no added risk to either mother or infant. However, repeat births while still an adolescent, particularly those with short intervals between the births, have been associated with significantly worse outcomes (poor school performance, lower employment success, and higher levels of family poverty and welfare receipt) for both mother and children. To varying degrees, adolescent pregnancy and parenting is an issue throughout the developed and developing world. In this workshop, we will review international data on rates of adolescent sexual debut, adolescent pregnancy, abortion to teens, adolescent births and repeat births. In the United States adolescent pregnancy has been studied for several decades. We will draw on this large body of literature to review current understanding of the impacts of adolescent births, both first-time and higher order births. We will then focus on our own 20 years of evidence-based practice with first-time adolescent mothers to reduce rates of repeat births. We will describe our current thinking on our successes and failures, and propose theory-based models (e.g. Transtheoretical Model, Theory of Planned Behavior) for effective repeat birth prevention. Participants will be asked to bring information on adolescent pregnancy and births from their nations and any experience that they have in trying to do care or prevention with young mothers and their infants.