OUR VIEW: Kern's issue bigger than mailed condoms
By The Bakersfield Californian
It's difficult to imagine the California Department of Public Health's free condoms-by-mail program, announced last week, having a significant impact on Kern County's high birthrate and incidence of sexually transmitted disease among teens. That's not to say it won't help -- it well may.
But while we argue about the benefits of a state agency (working in concert with the nonprofit California Family Health Council) sending prophylactics through the mail to kids in plain yellow envelopes vs. the sanctity of parental guidance and family privacy, it's worthwhile to remember how we got here. Kern County, one of just five specific areas of the state selected for the program, was targeted with good reason: Chlamydia and gonorrhea are rampant here.
Kern County, selected for the home mailer program along with Alameda, Sacramento, San Joaquin and portions of San Francisco counties, is also a perennial leader in teen births, with rates among the worst in the nation.
Kern County Public Health Department data show that Kern had the highest incidence rate of chlamydia in California three years running, from 2008 to 2010, and roughly the fifth-highest incidence of gonorrhea. And Kern has been among the state leaders in teen births -- and usually No. 1 or No. 2 -- since such records have been kept.
Supplying teens with condoms, as long as it's accompanied by instruction on their use and limitations, may help. What will help immensely more is a concerted community effort to address pregnancy and STD prevention, including not only abstinence awareness but contraceptive education.
California requires instruction on HIV prevention in middle school and high school, but pregnancy prevention education is not required and many Kern schools opt not to provide it. That has resulted in an inconsistent patchwork of sex-ed programs in our schools.
Is there a connection between this laissez-faire approach and Kern's high rates of STDs and births among teens? You bet there is. A comprehensive sex-ed program early in high school would provide a substantial part of the answer to these chronic problems. Multiple studies show that such instruction does not encourage teens to have sex. The time to accept that and move forward is long past due.
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