Alison Moriarty Daley appointed by New Haven Mayor to co-chair new teen pregnancy prevention task force
New Haven, CT — May 1, 2006
As National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Day is celebrated across the country on Wednesday, May 3, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. has appointed Alison Moriarty Daley, Assistant Professor at YSN who holds a joint appointment at the Yale-New Haven Hospital Adolescent Clinic, and Dr. Keith Williams, Chair of the Department of Women's and Children's Services at the Hospital of St Raphael, to co-chair a new teen pregnancy prevention task force that will build on strides the City has made in reducing the pregnancy rate for teens.
"We are a community that knows how to solve problems," DeStefano said of the fact that New Haven has one of the lowest rates of births to teen mothers of any of Connecticut's big cities. In 2003, the most recent data available, New Haven had 265 births to teens, compared with 317 in Bridgeport and 407 in Hartford. But the Mayor said the City cannot become complacent. "But we cannot sit back. Despite our declines, we still know that girls are getting pregnant, and that it is happening most commonly between the ages of 17 to 19, mostly 18 and 19-year-olds. Since those teens are often out of school, the task force will look at ways to reach this population. Many teens just don't think that pregnancy can happen to them."
Nationally, despite recent declines in teen pregnancy and birth rates, nearly four out of ten girls in this country still get pregnant at least once before age 20, giving the U.S. the highest rates of teen pregnancy and birth in the fully industrialized world.
Specifically, the Mayor and task force have decided to work on three primary goals
Making sure teens have good access to care
working with the schools on curriculum issues so the message gets to teens through school
stepping up targeted outreach to males. Although girls have traditionally been the major focus of efforts to prevent teen pregnancy, the importance of targeting teen boys and young men is increasingly apparent to researchers, practitioners, parents, and others who work with youth
Coordinated by Community Service Administrator Sheila Allen Bell and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Reginald Mayo, the task force is co-chaired by Alison Moriarty Daley, assistant professor and pediatric nurse practitioner at YSN, and Dr. Keith Williams, chief of obstetrics, gynecology and family medicine at the Hospital of St. Raphael.
The City will mark the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy on Wednesday, May 3, 2006 at 11 a.m. with a ceremony at Hill Regional Career High School that will include students and task force members taking part in an online quiz to gauge how informed teens are about avoiding pregnancy.
