Gentle readers of this modest blog surely already know that May is designated as teen pregnancy prevention month (four word noun string...ding, ding, ding). Part of the month is a National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (bitchin' cool online activity for teens; please do encourage young people to participate). As we round the halfway point of May, I have been struck by a few new relevant numbers.

• The progress the nation has made in reducing teen pregnancy (thanks, teens) has been nothing short of remarkable. Teen pregnancy is down 42% and the teen birth rate has been cut nearly in half over the past two decades. There has been impressive progress in all 50 states and among all racial/ethnic groups. Unfortunately, this amazing national success is the greatest story never told. In a recent survey, just 18% of adults correctly believe the nation's teen pregnancy rate has declined; 50% incorrectly believe the rate has increased.
• In fact, despite the strides the nation has made in helping young people avoid too-early pregnancy and parenthood, the majority of Americans--correctly--believe that this particular mission is not accomplished. More than eight in ten continue to view teen pregnancy as an important problem and fully seven in 10 adults (and eight in ten Hispanic and African-American adults) believe more efforts to prevent teen pregnancy are needed in their community.

So before May is over, let's all agree to do the following: Thank a teen, share the good news about the nation's steep declines in teen pregnancy, and recommit ourselves to continue to remind others that the nation's rates of teen pregnancy remain unacceptably high and that now is the time to redouble our efforts and press hard for new and innovative solutions--not rest on our laurels.

P.S. On this day in 1966 Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde and The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds albums were both released. Greatest release day in music history? Discuss.

Back in February, I blogged about the study by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and how the national Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR) for Latino high school students had increased 71.4%. Now, I'm elated to follow-up with a blog regarding a new report released last week by The Pew Research Hispanic Center that builds upon NCES's findings. According to Pew, the Latino high school dropout rate is at an all-time low and has dropped 50% from its rate in 2001 (28%) to its current level in 2011 (14%)!

Furthermore, Pew states that 69% of Latino high school graduates in the Class of 2012 enrolled in college that fall, at a rate that surpassed those of non-Hispanic white high school graduates (67%).

With Latino teen educational attainment on the rise and Latina teen pregnancy rates continuing to decline, I hope that these findings indicate the beginning of what will be a long-term, ongoing trend. With an ever growing number of Latino teens delaying parenthood, graduating from high school, and enrolling in college, this generation of youths has a future that's full of promise and prosperity.

I realize that not everything can be planned perfectly (trust me) and often there's not a perfect time for anything in your life--but I believe that we value motherhood and as a nation can probably give a bit more thought to when it might begin. So, if you're not quite ready to become a mom, along with remembering to tell your mom you love her on Sunday, remember to use some kind of birth control if you're having sex (hopefully you won't have to get notarized permission to do so). I'll be celebrating on Sunday with my 8-month old son and his dad. We'll be remembering our Abigail too. How will you be celebrating?

It's May, which means that not only is it National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month, it's also officially prom (and graduation) season. This is a mega-exciting time for a lot of teens, but can be filled with a lot of temptation too.

In TV and movies, prom night is when a lot of girls decide they're ready to have sex. But do these fictional worlds reflect reality?

A survey published in Seventeen Magazine found that about 14% of teens surveyed had sex on prom night. But the majority of those teens had had sex at least once before. Only 5% of girls and 3% of guys said they had sex for the first time on prom night.

So it might feel like there's a lot of pressure to make prom extra-special. But everyone isn't doing it.

Still, parents need to prepare teens to make the right decisions on prom night. Make sure they know how to protect themselves if they decide to have sex. And let them know prom is fun enough without needing sex to make it more exciting.

I'm all for parents knowing, or trying hard to know, what's going on with their children, including their teenage children. But there are ways to do that that don't raise the odds that a sexually active daughter will forego birth control. Keeping in touch with other parents, teachers and counselors is one of those.

There is no reliable data showing that requiring parental consent prevents teens from getting pregnant. And no state has ever mandated the second step of requiring notarization, which would further spook the teen. In fact, if the legislation passes, teens who picked up a pack of birth control pills monthly would need to provide notarized parental permission each month.

Intrigued yet? Read the rest.

Beginning today, Wednesday, May 1--and throughout the month of May--teens nationwide are asked to go to StayTeen.org to participate in our National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy Quiz, which challenges them to think carefully about what they might do "in the moment" though a series of interactive scenarios.  This year, for the first time, teens will be able to insert themselves and their friends directly into the quiz by creating personalized avatars (a graphical representation of the user).

Want to get involved?  

• Take the National Day Quiz and encourage the teens in your life to take it as well.
• Use our National Day discussion guide to start a conversation about sex, love, relationships, and teen pregnancy.
• Share the National Day press release far and wide. 
• Spread the word via social media using our sample National Day Tweets and Facebook messages.
• Download National Day flyers.

Tomorrow is the 12th Annual National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and we hope that everyone concerned about teen pregnancy will do what they can to promote this year's fun and informative online event. Last year's National Day reached more than 700,000 people around the country and with the help of our outstanding National Day partners, state and local organizations who are organizing National Day activities all across the country, and teens themselves, we hope to reach even more people this year.

The National Day Quiz has been completely revamped for 2013 and has never looked better.  This year's quiz is highly interactive and allows teens to insert themselves directly into the action through the creation of customizable avatars, which can be shared on sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Also, for the first time ever, teens can access the National Day Quiz on tablets and smartphones.

Remember, the National Day Quiz will be available at StayTeen.org all month long, so it's not too late to help spread the word. Want to get involved right now? Find some helpful ideas after the jump.

Well, thank goodness for Frisky Friday and Bedsider! I just found out that most antibiotics do not, I repeat, do NOT, reduce the efficacy of birth control pills! In the confusing world of contraception, that was one thing that I thought I knew, without a doubt. Everyone knows that, right? "Be sure you use a back-up method if you need to take an antibiotic." Turns out that the conventional wisdom on that issue has changed.

A study published in May 2011 reviewed data on thousands of women using oral contraception to see if taking antibiotics made any difference in likelihood of becoming pregnant. While sometimes contraceptives did fail, pregnancy was as likely to occur among women who did not take antibiotics as among women who did take antibiotics. Note that one specific antibiotic--Rifampin, or Rifampicin, which is primarily used to treat tuberculosis--does reduce the efficacy of oral contraceptives; that interaction is well established. But the data simply do not support the old-school belief that all antibiotics cause the pill to fail. For more information, take a look at what The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, The Mayo Clinic, and The America Academy of Dermatology have to say about antibiotics and birth control.

A few weeks ago, as Spring and its attendant allergies were getting underway, a friend was prescribed an antibiotic for sinusitis. Susannah uses the birth control patch, so when the pharmacist recommended back-up birth control, she didn't question it, she just bought condoms. Three days later a condom broke. And because she uses an app to track her cycle she knew that she had just started ovulating. Susannah called the pharmacist, who suggested emergency contraception (EC), just to be safe. Which she duly ingested. While I'm glad the pharmacist had Susannah's best interests at heart and there's no harm in being super-safe with condoms and EC, how did he not know that there is only one antibiotic that reduces the efficacy of hormonal contraceptives?

So, once again: unless you are taking Rifampin, your antibiotic will not cause your hormonal birth control to be less effective. That is some great news!

Despite a 34 percent decline in teen pregnancy over the past two decades, four out of 10 Latinas get pregnant at least once before age 20--more than one and a half times higher than the national average. Research makes clear that there is much parents can do to help their children avoid teen pregnancy. Unfortunately, there are few resources that help Latino parents navigate this critical area. Therefore, in 2011, The National Campaign developed the Latino Parent Teen Communication project. Through the project, which is generously supported in part by The California Wellness Foundation, The National Campaign and partners worked with stakeholders in California to develop, test, promote, and distribute resources for Latino parents that will help them reduce teen pregnancy in their families and communities.

Families Talking Together (FTT), an evidence-based program specifically designed for Latino families, was chosen for use with the project because it responded to all of the needs identified through a series of focus groups, interviews, and literature review. The question left unanswered was, what is the best way to deliver FTT to Latino families? How can we make sure that parents can learn from FTT that would ensure they will talk to their kids?

As a mid-twenties female, I spend a lot of time thinking about preventing pregnancy--not only because I am interning with The National Campaign's Bedsider program, but also because preventing pregnancy can sometimes take a lot of effort (hint: text and email reminders help immensely). Too often we ladies (and gents) think so much about preventing pregnancy that we forget that STIs are even around. After all, it seems like getting pregnant when you don't want to be is just the worst thing ever, while STIs only happen to that girl that you once knew or your jerk ex-boyfriend or that guy in class who you just knew got around without protection.

The fact is that one half of all sexually active people will get an STI before the age of 25 and 20 million Americans will get an STI this year. Bedsider got serious about STD Awareness Month this April--because having a healthy sex life doesn't end with contraception; it also includes preventing the spread of STIs.

Here are some of the ways we've put the spotlight on STIs this month:

• A guest post by Jenelle Marie, founder of the STD Project, discussed the 4 major myths that contribute to the spread of STIs. Jenelle was kind enough to also write a three-piece series about her experiences living with an STI, including four essential tips for safer sex. (Jenelle's story inspired me to share this great Provider Prospective, which dispels rumors and myths about herpes and takes down the stigma surrounding the virus.)
• Because healthy sex lives involve both contraception and STI prevention, we also had a Provider Prospective that sets the record straight about STIs, pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), and my favorite method of contraception--the IUD.
• Meanwhile, I had the fun task of trying out some smartphone apps that can make sex safer, which got me a little addicted to Condom Pro--though I'll probably never be as good at the game as the charming (and handsome!) Condom Master.
• Veralyn Williams, a fearless journalist in NYC, shared in the condom love this month in her piece on the fine art of condom negotiation, and she also took a look at 5 facts about STIs that most people don't know (but should).
• Finally, STD Awareness Month is the perfect time to look back at the great work of our Bedsider college ambassadors at the University of South Carolina. For Project Condom last month, they became condom fashionistas with a fierce condom gladiator dress, complete with condom sandals.

Bedsider's work around STIs doesn't end on the 30th. We'll be answering questions, dispelling myths, and spreading the good word about safer sex all year round.

*****

Laura Covarrubias is an intern with the digital media department of The National Campaign and an MSPH Candidate at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins. She is fascinated by Kate Middleton's hair and dreams of someday visiting the Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica.

I never thought the day would come when I'd sit down to watch TV and choose Lifetime over MTV, but it finally happened. I recently started tuning in Tuesday evenings to a new reality series called Preachers' Daughters, which, as the title would suggest, follows three daughters of preachers in their day-to-day lives. The show focuses on the girls as they grapple with typical teen experiences, like dating and socializing, under the supervision of religious and often highly protective families. Unlike many reality shows on television right now, all of the girls outwardly value and practice abstinence and plan on saving sex for something that happens after marriage. But that doesn't mean they have always felt that way.

One of the girls, Olivia, is a single teen mom who admits she used to party and take risks but is ready to reform her life now that she's a parent. But that doesn't mean she's never going to date again. She talks to her parents and sister about bringing a new guy into her life and how she should introduce her beliefs and values to him. Even though she's had sex in the past, she's decided she's going to wait until she's married and focus on her relationship with God in the meantime. She's looking for a guy who will be good to her and her family, will be a good role model for her daughter, and will understand her decision to wait. While the guy she introduces to her family turns out not to be what she expected, her sister reminds her that the right guy would not only understand her decision but also have similar values when it comes to waiting.

The communication between the girls and their families is great. It's not easy to be the child of a religious leader and the temptation to rebel as a teenager may seem even greater in such a situation. But they all have open and honest conversations, talking about morals and expectations in their families, in every single episode. Abstinence is portrayed in a positive light and discussed frankly among very normal-looking teen couples. I have to admit, it's pretty refreshing.

Marriage has been all over the media lately, with the release of Knot Yet--a report published by the Campaign in partnership with the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the RELATE Institute--which has led to lots of juicy media coverage. All the discussion seems to have brought with it the resurgence of the 'Hookup Culture' debate...

Donna Freitas, the author of The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture Is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually Unfulfilled, and Confused About Intimacy wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post blasting the unfulfilling sexual detachment most college students are experiencing on campuses today. And she blames hooking up.

According to Freitas, when she attended college almost two decades ago, the most provocative Friday night activity she engaged in was dressing up in a tight Halloween costume to hit the town with her roommate, while today's college co-eds are busy gallivanting across campus from dorm to dorm in a flourish of hyper-sexuality.

...I'd like to suggest that this may be a slight exaggeration.

Freitas describes these hookups as, "fast, uncaring, unthinking, perfunctory," and credits them with leaving students feeling empty and ashamed. Perhaps this is true, but I think she might be overstating the problem somewhat. I'm going on an anecdotal hunch here--but as an instructor at a local university I come in contact with undergraduates on a regular basis and I teach a human sexuality course so we discuss this subject pretty freely. In my experience, I would not say the campus culture is overly permissive of casual sex. In fact, I have actually been surprised on more than one occasion by my students expressing typically conservative values and opinions about sexuality.

I consulted a few blogs to learn more, and here's what I found. According to a study on Campus Sexual Assault, with a breakdown of the number of sex partners for college men and college women, there isn't quite as much 'hooking up' going on as folks might think. The results not only dispel the myth of a sexual free-for-all, they also dispel some myths about dating and sexual behavior. Here is a table showing the distribution of college men's and college women's number of sexual partners according to the study.

The majority of students are in steady dating relationships and have had fewer than five partners. Perhaps some of the discrepancy comes from the loose definition of 'hooking up'--it can mean different things to different people. This is a major problem with sex research in general, without common definitions individuals might be reporting on myriad behaviors in response to questions about sex or hooking up. So it doesn't actually look like college students are having tons more sex than they did when Freitas was running around in a skimpy devil costume after all.

Recently, in my daily perusal of Teen Mom-related news I came across this.

Apparently former Bachelor/Bachelorette star Ali Fedotowsky hates Teen Mom. Not that she's ever watched it, but she says "I can't believe Teen Mom is still on the air and is as popular as it is. I don't like that show, I don't get it, I don't understand why it's popular ... I've never seen it, but based on what it's about, it might be the worst show on television."

Allow me to disagree. In addition to chronicling the drama and angst of a few young women's lives, what Teen Mom is about are the hardships and challenges of real life when you become a parent before you're ready. Not only the ways too-early parenthood affects these young mothers themselves, but also how it influences their children, their families, their education, their dreams and their futures. The show doesn't gloss over any of it. It doesn't try to make it look glamorous or fun or easier than it is. The tears are real (and plentiful), the struggles are real, and the impact it's had on viewers is real.

Chances are, if you're a teenager or young adult and you've watched Teen Mom, you know a bit more than you used to about the demands of parenthood and the toll it can take on a young person. You also know a little bit more about birth control, the effort required to sustain a relationship in the midst of a hectic life, and how critically important it is to have supportive friends and family.

If you watch Ali's claims to fame--The Bachelor or The Bachelorette--your takeaways are probably very different. For example:

• Even when the Bachelor/ettes are having sleepover dates, there is never a mention of safe sex or pregnancy prevention. Compare that to Teen Mom--whose viewers are privy to OBGYN appointments where various contraceptive methods are explained and IUDs have actually been inserted. The Teen Moms also discuss birth control with their friends and partners. Not so much for the Bachelorettes. For all their talk about "protecting your heart," there is precious little about protecting your body.
• Teen Mom's young parents are navigating relentlessly chaotic lives--babies, school, parents, friends, jobs--all while trying to create or preserve romantic relationships. Contestants on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette are living a dream world of luxury vacations. No bosses or deadlines, no household chores, no car trouble, no homework. A bad date for them is one that ends without a rose. Bad dates on Teen Mom involve leaving a restaurant before ordering because of a toddler meltdown. Relationships on Teen Mom also compete with co-parenting drama, addiction, death, divorce, and other very real struggles. Not so much for the Bachelor/ettes. Their relationships, such as they are, happen in "fantasy suites" with mood music and flattering light.
• The girls on Teen Mom come from different sorts of circumstances, but one thing is clear across all their stories: No one can do it alone. Support from family and friends is paramount--whether it's with regard to money or a place to live or babysitting or a shoulder to cry on or someone to rejoice alongside you when your baby reaches a new milestone. On Ali's shows, it seems the opposite is true. Everyone is in competition with each other, friendships are fake, sabotage is rampant, and the only way to "win" is if the other women lose.

Not every TV show is an important learning experience. Not every "reality" show reflects real life. But when you watch and care about a program or a character or a storyline--especially if you're young and developing your own ideas about what's real and important--entertainment informs your worldview.

Ironically, everyone on Teen Mom and The Bachelor/ette seems to want the same thing in the end--to get married and live happily ever after. And you know what might help with that? It's an idea Ali Fedotowsky mentions in her musings about television, as she laments the end of Tyra Banks' late, great daytime show: "A talk show for girls who are 18-30, one that focuses on issues that actually affect them."

Amen.

Dr. Yolanda Reyna, Co-Chair of Counseling and Support Services at Palo Alto College (TX), speaks with an attendee at the Innovations conference about how she incorporated the topic of preventing unplanned pregnancy into her college success courses.

One of my favorite parts of my job is watching people see the "Back Off Baby" image for the first time. You can almost hear their inner monologue: "Wow, those colors really pop. Hmmm, 'Back off baby, I'm in school.' Is that a...wait...yep, that's an egg wearing a graduation cap and a bunch of sperm swimming towards it."

The image, which was created by Jackie Imirie in a graphic design course at Montgomery College, beautifully and effectively sums up why colleges should care about helping students prevent unplanned pregnancy: because it can be a barrier to completion. Which is why we use the "Back Off Baby" as much as possible to raise awareness of this connection (notice how many times it appears in our booth?).