DR Barbara Bailey, an expert in gender and development, yesterday called for more focused health educational programmes targeting the needs of adolescents at risk.

“The importance of attention to adolescent health and the impact of teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and particularly HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, injury and violence, is paramount at this time in Jamaica. Data from the 2000 and 2001 Economic and Social Survey support this concern,” Bailey told the 14th annual nursing midwifery conference at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston.

“Information on adolescent health indicate that 25 per cent of the total visits to antenatal clinics were within the 10-19 age group, an indication of the high level of pregnancies among teens,” added Bailey, the co-ordinator of the Gender and Development Centre at the University of the West Indies, Mona.

She said that some preliminary research done by herself and another researcher showed that the main reason for girls 14-18 dropping out of the school system was pregnancy.

“The number one reason for school drop out, supplied by these girls, many of whom have been below the legal age of consent at the time, was pregnancy,” she said. “The prevalence of teenage pregnancy feeds into the cycle of poverty for women, as these young girls become the next generation of low-skilled, low-waged workers responsible for a female-headed household. Or at the very worst, (they) are trapped in undesirable relationships in their quest for economic viability.”

She added: “These data point to the fact that adolescents are at risk and need to be targeted for health education programmes both through formal and informal channels and that these programmes need to be introduced during the primary level years.”

She suggested that a health and family life education programme introduced by the education ministry be further developed and better implemented.

“… the programme at the primary level addresses, health awareness, interpersonal relationships, human sexuality, drug abuse and environmental issues,” she explained. “At the lower grades these concerns are integrated into broader themes, and although the prefered mode of delivery at the upper grades would be to present health education as an intact subject, individual schools determine how this is done and often infuse the information into other subject areas. Perhaps we need to look at how this programme is being developed.”

Bailey also said that despite initiatives by the Ministry of Education and other agencies, the 1997 Jamaica Reproductive Health Survey revealed that 19 per cent males and 14 per cent of females in the 15-17 age range reported receiving no sex education. Providing health education she said only partly addressed the concerns about adolescent health.

It was more important for these programmes, she said, to be more responsive to the unique needs of adolescent males and females and recommended that research needed to be done to establish the links between gender, health and education.