Vermilion Parish Louisiana and Teen

Vermilion Parish Louisiana and Teen Pregnancy Factors

The statistics coming out of Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, concerning teens living in the Parish who are sexually active and the resultant pregnancy rates should be of concern to Louisiana, and to the rest of America too. Louisiana, and in Vermilion Parish as an example, the rate of teen pregnancy is higher in rural areas than the national averages when compared to urban teen populations (Skatrud, Julia DeClerque, Bennett, Trude, and Loda, Frank, 1998, 21). According to a Kaiser Family Foundation (2006) report, overall teen pregnancies fell in 2000. However, there remains much to be concerned about with teens in rural areas, where the average teen pregnancy rate is 17% higher than it is in urban areas. It raises the question of how to teach teens in urban areas to prevent unwanted teen pregnancies, especially when, as is the case in Louisiana, the school system where the teen builds their social network of social experiences prevents sexual education other than abstinence.

The answer might be to approach the problem from two directions. First, treat the problem not a teen pregnancy problem, or sexual behavioral problem, but as one that is disease related and topic focused. Do not teach the teens about the problems of sexually transmitted diseases, but rather reverse the roles and allow the teens to teach the mentors about how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. Allow the teens in the groups to act as the non-designated facilitators, and when the question of how to prevent sexually transmitted diseases is put to them, allow them to direct the conversation as to the ways in which the teaching comes from the student, not the instructor or the facilitator.

As educators and health specialists, we take what the teens in the rural areas already know - sexual impulse, and we take their knowledge to have peer-based discussion and let them suggest the many ways to prevent STDs. This is one to have a discussion on the subject without the elements of the topic of sexual education being the focus.

Certainly it would give rise to debate within the community, and would perhaps because it circumvents the authority that was asserted by the community in limiting the teen's awareness to abstinence, would eventually have to be abandoned because of the ways in which the community would relate the process to what it actually is: getting the kids the information on birth control.