At a glance
- Preventive health services can have a significant effect on an adolescent’s immediate and life-long health. Such services can reduce risk behaviors and prevent negative health outcomes.
- Teens in the United States are less likely than younger children and adults to receive recommended preventive health services.
- Schools can play a critical role in helping deliver needed health services to teens, including sexual health services.
Teen sexual risk behaviors
Teens are generally healthy. But sometimes they engage in sexual behaviors that put them at risk for HIV, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and pregnancy. For instance, in the United States young people (aged 13–24 years) accounted for:
- An estimated 21% of all new HIV infections.
- Nearly half of the 20 million new STIs reported each year.
Did you know?
- Teen pregnancy rates have declined consistently during the past 25 years. But the rates of unintended pregnancy still remain high.
- One way to prevent HIV, STIs and unintended pregnancy among teens is to increase their access to and use of sexual health services (SHS). This includes HIV testing, contraceptive counseling, gonorrhea and chlamydia testing and treatment, and human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination.
Teens need preventive health services
Several national guidelines for preventive care specifically include SHS recommendations for teens. Despite these official guidelines and recommendations, teens may not seek or have access to recommended SHS.
For instance, in 2019, less than 10% of all students reported having ever been tested for HIV. And online survey results found that only 7% of 15–19-year-olds had been tested for STIs in the previous year.
What CDC is doing
CDC recommends actions for school districts and schools to ensure that students have access to key SHS. SHS could be through on-site services at schools, or off-site referrals to youth-friendly, community-based health service providers. SHS can be provided by or linked to school-based health centers (SBHC), school nurses, and community health care providers.
CDC provides program guidance on how to increase student access to SHS by encouraging schools to:
- Help ensure student confidentiality.
- Increase awareness of adolescent sexual health needs. Schools can do this through medically accurate information to district and school staff, community partners, and parents.
- Raise student awareness of the need for and availability of SHS—perhaps through school-wide social marketing campaigns.
- Establish solid community partners that can help deliver SHS on-site or serve as a source of referral. Community partners can help with sexual health education or professional development trainings.
- Establish a referral system that links students to youth-friendly providers.
- Provide SHS on-site by expanding services, making current services more appealing to students, or adding new services.
See Also
What schools can do
Schools can help increase student access to health services. Schools had direct daily contact with more than 15.4 million students in grades 9–12 in 2020. This makes schools vital partners in connecting teens to health services.
School districts can help teens access health services either through provision of on-site school services or by referrals to youth-friendly health care providers in the community.
Did you know?
There has been less attention on how schools can improve youth health services—despite evidence for promising approaches.
Getting support
Poor mental health is associated with health risks during adolescence and into adulthood.
Youth who feel sad and hopeless are more likely to engage in behaviors that put them at risk for:
- HIV.
- STIs.
- Unintended pregnancy.
- Violence.
- Substance use.
- Poor grades.
- Potentially life-long health problems.
Supporting Adolescent Mental Health
See Also
