January 2010 Archives

Young people commonly engage in risky sexual behaviors and increasingly are at risk for STDs and pregnancy, according to (CDC).http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5806a1.htm

The report analyzes sexual health and behavior data. The latest findings indicate:

• A majority of 18 and 19 year olds report having had sex.
• Approximately 30% of males and females ages 15-17 say they have had sex.
• Roughly 30% of 15-19 years olds report having multiple partners.

The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee voted on September 9, 2009, to recommend  Gardasil for use in preventing genital warts with boys and young men. 

Currently, the Merck vaccine is licensed for use with females ages 9-26, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend routine vaccination with Gardasil for girls ages 11-12, with catch-up vaccination for females ages 13-26. 

ASHA vice-president for health policy Deborah Arrindell says “the availability of two vaccines will promote competition in the marketplace, and hopefully will create an incentive for researchers to conduct further evaluation to better understand how each vaccine works, and how they may differ.

Of course it took Harvard to figure this out, but it seems, from a small sample of racially and ethnically diverse parents and kids, that parents are missing the boat when it comes to timing their sex talks with kids. This study is unique in that rather than being a retrospective account of when parents talked to kids, it was concurrent.

The researchers surveyed parents about the timing of dicsussion of different sex related topics with the stage of sexual activity they thought their kids had experienced.The kids did the same thing - except they reported the sexual activity they had engaged in at the time of the conversation.

Guess what? Time and again, the parents underestimated the level of sexual activity their kids had engaged in. For example, a parent talked to their child about wet dreams and said they thought their child had been kissed. The child reported they had experienced genital touching. Whoops!

Bottom line. Start talking about everything before they're sexually active. It will serve them well.

Check out the charts!  http://tinyurl.com/ydnkf95