Now I hate to play favorites, but this is news that I absolutely have to share.

You might remember me raving about cheeseheads a couple of months ago.  Just to recap, people all over Milwaukee have made teen pregnancy prevention a priority, from the local newspaper to business leaders and dozens of non-profits.

The Teen Pregnancy Oversight Committee, with leadership from the United Way of Greater Milwaukee who is spearheading this effort, the Milwaukee City Health Department, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Urban Population Health, set a goal to reduce teen births in the city among 15- to 17-year-olds by 46 percent by 2015.

This week, Mayor Tom Barrett and Health Commissioner Bevan Baker reported the city's stunning first step toward this goal:  the teen birth rate in Milwaukee declined 10% between 2006 and 2007. That's from about 55 births per 1,000 teens to 50 per 1,000, the lowest rate since 1979.

My new favorite city has a long way to go to reach its 2015 goal, but for now this honorary cheesehead is basking in Milwaukee's success.

Read more about the decline and more about the United Way initiative.  Any thoughts about how Wisconsinites achieved this success?  Is your city seeing similar results?  Dying to tell us about your state or community's efforts?  Please share and discuss.

This past Friday, I had the privilege of heading up to Philadelphia to accept a Freddie Award for The National Campaign's "Too Young" educational film in the category of Adolescent Health.  For those of you who don't know, the Freddie Awards are also known as "the Oscars for healthcare media" and seek to encourage the development of cutting-edge health-related educational materials.  Surrounded by our fellow winners -- including heavyweights from places like Discovery Health Channel and HBO -- I felt like a small fish in a big pond and it was such an honor for our little film to be recognized with our very heavy, very naked statue of Hermes. For more information about the Freddies and to learn about some of the evening's other winners, check out http://www.TheFreddies.com.

If you haven't seen "Too Young" yet, what are you waiting for?  The entire film is just shy of five minutes long and it's embedded above, so you really have no excuse.  For more information, to order copies of the film, and to download a companion fact sheet and discussion guide, check out the "Too Young" section of our website.

If you've been paying attention to all to the news over the past year, you know that teen pregnancy happens in all kinds of families and all kinds of communities. Despite more than a decade of significant declines in teen pregnancy and birth rates, it is still the case that 3 in 10 girls will get pregnant at least once by age 20. But it is one of the few public health issues that is actually 100% preventable.  It has been our hope from the start that this film would help raise awareness about this important issue and get teens thinking about avoiding pregnancy and parenthood. Given the great response we've received, we are very proud of "Too Young" and the conversations it is generating nationwide.

Read our thank you's after the jump...

I come to praise Sarah Palin, not to bury her. 

As part of her post-election media tour, Governor Palin appeared on CNN's Larry "Older Than Moses" King Show.  When asked about her pregnant teenage daughter Bristol,  Palin had this to say:

"You know, I looked at her and thought---and I thought, Bristol, honey, you're going to have to grow up really fast...She's going to make a great mom.  And she---she is very strong.  She's going to be just fine.   

But Bristol has an opportunity at this point also to reach out to other young American women and let them know that these are absolutely less than ideal circumstances that she or any other unwed teenage mother are in.  And it is not something to glamorize.  It's not something to condone, if you will.  Bristol has an opportunity to reach out to other young mothers and help them and, hopefully, not see such a prevalence, also, of unwed teenage mothers.  The rates are too high." 

Although we all might quibble with the exact language the Governor used --- and I'm sure most of us wish she had made this sort of statement earlier in the Campaign (see this op-ed from our friend Saul Hoffman) --- nonetheless, this strikes me as a strong and important statement from a leading R.

Miley Cyrus has a new BF.  He's 20, she's about to turn 16.  I'm a dad of a daughter who adores Miley and her on-screen alter ego of Hanna Montana and I really don't want to be in the position of having to explain another Hollywood unplanned pregnancy.  I know others worry too.

Even though Miley is wearing a purity ring, indicating a vow of chasity, there are other rumors that indicate that she is on the pill.  I hope Miley is on the pill if she continues to date the 20-year-old, because experience proves that kind of relationship--where the older person has so much power and influence--results in sex.

Moreover, research shows that when teen girls have sex at a young age with much older partners, the chances are greater that their first sexual experiences are involuntary or unwanted and that they will become pregnant.

But what really gets my back up is that Miley's dad, Billy Ray, supports the relationship. 

Did that mullet hurt his head?  What do you think?