American adolescents are paying a heavy price for their sexual activity: contending with one million pregnancies annually, suffering from 250,000 cases of HIV, and bearing a disproportionate burden of the most commonly reported sexually transmitted infections (STis). The grim state of adolescent sexual health makes reduction of the behaviors associated with pregnancy and STI/HIV risk a high priority. Interest in reducing the nation's adolescent pregnancy and STI/HIV burden is part public policy and part politics; while there exists a desire to reduce the infection and pregnancy burden for the betterment of the community, many individuals view adolescent sexual activity and its consequences, such as out-of-wedlock births, as immoral. This difference of opinion acts as a barrier to developing initiatives to reduce adolescent sexual risk. President Bush's adolescent risk reduction strategy is focused on the use of socalled abstinence-only programs to encourage teen sexual abstention. While few would argue against the promotion of teen abstinence, abstinence-only curriculums lack scientific evidence to prove they are effective in reducing adolescent sexual risk. Data does exist, however, to support comprehensive, community-tailored programs that target teenagers, but the funding for such programs relative to abstinence-only curriculums is abysmal. The issue of teen sexuality has followed the same path as abortion and physician-assisted suicide, where religious theory and political election concerns, not empirical evidence, drive policy decisions.Master of Public Healt
