The Long Term Benefits of a Comprehensive Teenage Pregnancy Program

Abstract

A comprehensive program was founded in 1982 to provide adolescents with prenatal and family planning care. The program's impact through its first five years of operation on medical aspects of pregnancy course and fetal outcome will be the subject of a separate report. This study examines subsequent maternal and infant health of the patients attending the program compared to a control group. Four hundred ninety-eight adolescents and their newborns attending the program's mother-baby family planning clinic from 1982 to 1989 (subject group) were compared to ninety-one adolescents and their newborns receiving postpartum family planning and pediatrics clinics from 1980 through 1989 (control group). Seventy-five percent of the subject group regularly attended mother-baby clinic, compared to 18% of the control group attending family planning and pediatric clinics (P≤.0001). The subject group experienced less maternal and infant morbidity, greater school attendance, graduation, employment, and contraceptive use than the control group (P<.0001). Many parameters improved with each program year indicating continued wide acceptance of our program by area adolescents.