About a month and a half ago my colleague Katy Suellentrop blogged about a new policy being proposed to include pregnancy on the list of prohibitions for military personnel. While I haven't heard any news directly on that front, I am happy to report that the Pentagon announced yesterday that they would make it a requirement that emergency contraception (commonly referred to as EC, or the morning-after pill) be offered at all military bases worldwide.

It makes sense to have emergency contraception on hand, period. But, compounded by the heart-wrenching news from about a year ago of reports stating that rates of sexual assault had risen by more than 25% in Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems all the more important that the military make sure that these services are available to Americans serving at home and abroad.

There isn't yet much news on how or when this policy will be implemented, but we'll try and keep you posted. As always, we'd love to hear what you think and we'll stay tuned as the military addresses these serious issues.

PS: To learn more about how the Army is working to address sexual assault in its ranks, check out its "SHARP" program.

On Monday, President Obama released his budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2011. What is in, or out, of the budget matters a lot for people around the country. And fundamentally, the budget reflects an Administration's priorities and values. At a time when the President has proposed an overall freeze on discretionary spending (with some important exceptions), he has also proposed new investments in some things that will make a difference in the long-run. In President Obama's words: "Just as it would be a terrible mistake to borrow against our children's future to pay our way today, it would be equally wrong to neglect their future by failing to invest in areas that will determine our economic success in this new century."

We applaud the President for proposing investments in preventing teen and unplanned pregnancy, which are directly related to improving educational outcomes, improving workforce preparation, and improving the prospects of this generation and the next. And, as a research-based organization, we were thrilled to see a continued commitment to investing in programs with strong evidence, as well as in research and innovation to expand the repertoire of effective programs.

If you own a TV and have turned it on at some point in the last several weeks, chances are good that you've seen something about teen pregnancy. Maybe it was on the news -- last week we learned that the nation's teen pregnancy rate climbed 3%, a reverse in the steep decline we've seen over the past 15 years. Or maybe you were one of the 23 million people who caught "The Pregnancy Pact," Lifetime's fictionalized account of the alleged teen pregnancy pact among high schoolers in Gloucester, MA, in 2008. Perhaps it was "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," ABC Family's hit series about young Amy Juergens and her complicated life as a teen mom. You've probably caught at least one episode of MTV's compelling "Teen Mom" series lately -- millions of viewers have been tuning in and buzzing about it. If you missed all of those, then you still may have seen Bristol Palin interviewed with her mom by Oprah Winfrey. 

As the nation's most famous teen mother, Bristol Palin told Oprah that she is personally committed to abstaining from sex until marriage. Oprah pushed her a bit on whether she was really going to be able to do that, and Bristol stood her ground. As the teen ambassador for the Candie's Foundation, Bristol has been sharing her views with teens about abstinence and about her first-hand experiences as a teen mom. Her appearance in May 2009, along with National Campaign CEO Sarah Brown, at a Candie's Foundation Town Hall meeting sparked a national conversation about teen pregnancy. News coverage of the event -- and hence teen pregnancy -- reached tens of millions of people. The Candie's Foundation has been drawing attention to preventing teen pregnancy since 2001, when Neil Cole decided to put his media savvy and celebrity contacts to work for a cause he cares about.

Whether you love what you're seeing or totally disagree with it, one thing is certain: all this media attention to teen pregnancy and parenthood is making people talk. What do you think about what you've been watching? Have you had family conversations about teen pregnancy and how to prevent it? Let us know.

We now have the first strong evidence that an abstinence-only intervention has been successful in delaying young teens from having sex. The study--published today in the American Medical Association's Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine and conducted by top-notch researchers--also shows that the abstinence intervention helped young teens reduce their recent sexual activity.

In the long, more-heat-than-light battle between abstinence and contraception, The National Campaign has been, from the very beginning, on the side of science. And there we remain. There is sure to be much said and written about this particular study--some cogent and reasonable and some hysterical and unreasonable--so stay tuned and please do tell us what you think in the comments feature below.

A few modest thoughts to consider as you read the evaluation:

• The evaluation design is very strong and the authors are very well-respected.
• The effect size of the intervention was quite large--the abstinence-only intervention reduced by about one-third the percentage of students who had sex compared to the control group.
• Importantly, the abstinence program did not have a negative impact on teen contraceptive use.
• It is also important to note that the abstinence-only program did not give participants an abstinence-until-marriage message (it simply encouraged teens to delay) and it did not denigrate contraception.
• A total of 662 African American students in 6th and 7th grade participated in the program. As the authors note, "the results of this trial should not be taken to mean that all abstinence-only interventions are efficacious" or that abstinence-only interventions will necessarily work with older teens or with teens in committed relationships.
• Those concerned with the "mixed message" argument should note that students who received more comprehensive messages--those that encouraged abstinence and careful contraceptive use--were not more likely to initiate sex.
• This intervention can now be added to the list of well-evaluated interventions that reduce risky sexual behavior among adolescents--the vast majority of these proven interventions combine messages about the importance of delaying sexual activity along with messages about the critical importance of sexually active teens using contraception consistently and carefully.

A final thought. This program--like all well-evaluated programs before it--is a partial solution to a complex problem. Because teen pregnancy has many causes, and because even the most effective programs do not eliminate teen pregnancy, it is unreasonable to expect any single curriculum or community program to make a serious dent in the problem on its own. Making true and lasting progress in preventing teen pregnancy requires a combination of community programs and broader efforts to influence values and popular culture, to engage parents and schools, to change the economic incentives that teens face, and more.

Read our statement for more, check out an article on the subject in The Washington Post, and tell us what you think!

Just as we instruct young people to wash their hands to avoid the flu, we can help more teens avoid dating violence by teaching them to get smart about their love lives.

We can all agree that young people need to learn how to spot and improve unhealthy relationships and to extract themselves from dangerous ones. We have, however, overlooked a huge opportunity for reducing dating violence even further. We must change the focus to primary prevention...avoiding dating violence before it begins.

Think about this. What if we taught teens, as early as middle school and certainly in high school, what a healthy romantic relationship looks like? How to really get to know someone, not only by spending time with them but also by observing their behavior with others? What the foundational ingredients of good relationships are? How to develop high standards for how they want to be treated by a romantic partner (and how to treat others with that same level of respect and empathy)? What if they learned more about what real intimacy is and how it develops, and about the benefits of pacing their relationship involvement more slowly? Finally, how to break up respectfully?

What would that world look like? I think it would look like a world with less dating violence.

And I'm not just dreaming. Multiple evaluations of The Dibble Institute's relationship skills programs indicate that when young people learn these life skills, their incidence of dating violence decreases, as does their aggression (both verbal and physical) toward their peers.

To avoid the flu, we get vaccinated and we sneeze into our elbows. To avoid dating violence, we can start teaching young people not only what to say "no" to, but, more importantly, what to say "yes" to. We can teach them the skills they need for healthy romantic relationships, now and in the future.

*****

Kay Reed is Executive Director of The Dibble Institute for Marriage Education, an organization dedicated to helping young people learn the skills necessary for successful relationships and marriages. This piece was written in observation of Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month, which began today, February 1.