Every child in Navarro County is school ready and assisted to meet their full potential.
Indicator 3.3: # of births to teen parents
732017
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Story Behind the Curve
What are the positive factors that are contributing to you reaching your desired result?
- Hope Center: work with parenting teens, provide pregnancy resources at no cost
- New Life: connection with pregnant teens through guidance counselor
- Sex education in schools: Abstinence based
What are the negative factors that are restricting you from reaching your desired result?
- COVID-19: Limited/Lack of Contact, limited to no access to sex education in school districts
- Access to free birth control: families have trouble finding condoms or other birth control solutions at an affordable rate
- Abstinence Only Classes: Sex education in schools limited to abstinence without other forms of birth control
What populations are the most disadvantaged and what causes these disparities?
- Unsupervised teens: (Parents working, single-parent households, etc.)
- Poverty/Low-Income: limited resources, generational poverty
- Rural population: far away from resources and education on sex
Are there foreseeable factors that will affect your work over the next few months to a year?
- Continued time away from school (Quarantine Babies)
- Social media: access to sexual content at earlier ages
What additional research is needed to better understand the factors that influence the slope of the curve and related disparities?
- The outcome/study of having mentors in schools who were teen parents
- What is the effectiveness of abstinence based education versus safe sex education?
- Giving educators access to Date Rape and Intimate Partner Violence training and education
Partners
Who are the partners who can help you reach your desired outcome? List partners and their roles.
- Growing Together Program, The New Life Program, The Hope Center
- School districts, educators, teachers
- Collaboration with medical professionsals, WIC/PEDIA
- Salvation Army, Compassion Corsicana: access to a large number of clients
- Churches: Teaching youth sex education, effects on mental, spiritual, emotional health. Teaching about signs of teen dating violence, sexual abuse, rape, etc.
- Medical Professionals: OBGYNs, Pediatricians, Family Physicians, etc.
- Parents, teenagers, and family: speaking to youth about safe and healthy sex.
What Works
Research/Evidence-Based Practices:
- Access to affordable birth control
- Teaching about safe sex and birth control in schools
- Mentoring
Low Cost/No Cost Solutions:
- Collaborating with schools (trainings): VOICE, Hope Center, etc.
- Texas Wear Condoms program: Providing free condoms and distributing them across the county
- AdvocatesForYouth.org: Advocating for sex education
Innovative/Out-the-Box Solutions:
- Advocating to legislature for realistic sex education courses
- Holding and implementing sex education courses
- Educating parents on how to have "the talk"
- Free daycare for high school students who are parenting
Additional Research:
- Do a Landscape Analysis of exisiting programs/curriculum in our county on sex education
- What are the benefits to separating genders for sex education?
- What education is happening for our LGBTQ+ students?
Strategy
| What Strategy | By Whom (Partners) | By When |
| Research Sex Education programs | Early Childhood Coaltion | Spring of 2021 |
| Partnering with exisiting agencies to sponsor events/courses | Coalition and local agencies | Spring of 2021 |
| Community Outreach: public health awarness campaign on safe sex | Coalition and local agencies | Ongoing/Continuing |
| Propose a new committee for sex education | Early Childhood Coalition |
