Teen pregnancy repeats

It’s a scenario Dr. Moss Hampton has seen all too often — pregnant teenage girls come to him for prenatal care, and they already have at least one child in their arms.
Hampton, regional chairman of the obstetrics and gynecology program at the local Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, recently began a study to examine the use of long-term contra-ceptives known as intrauterine devices among teenage mothers. 
The goal, he said, is to try to cut down the troubling incidence rates of teenage mothers who re-turn to the clinic pregnant with their second, third or even fourth child.
And his timing is dead-on.
A recent report released by the nonprofit research firm Child Trends showed that five of the 15 U.S. cities with the highest repeat teen pregnancy rates for 2006 are in Texas, a state that in 2004 had the highest rate of repeat teen births in the nation at 24 percent.
The report, which was released in August, ranked 73 of the nation’s largest cities by their repeat teen pregnancy rates based on data from 2006. Dallas topped the list at 28 percent, and San Anto-nio, Fort Worth, Austin and Houston all made the top 15. 
But here in Odessa, according to statistics compiled by Hampton and his team during 2007, a full 30 percent of teenage mothers receiving prenatal care at the local TTUHSC campus already had at least one child at home already — a higher rate than Dallas.
“You don’t have to see too many 17-year-olds with three kids before you say, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ ” Hampton said. “The social dynamics of it are unbelievable, and it’s not fair to saddle the burden on the school district.”
Hampton, therefore, took another look at his clinic’s approach to contraception for teenagers and wondered if perhaps the traditional birth control pill or shot are missing the mark for a group that at times can be very forgetful.
Because research shows that teenagers tend to have a low compliance rate with daily consump-tion of prescribed birth control methods — Hampton said about 50 percent of teenagers stop taking their prescribed medications within two months — he and his colleagues have begun to consider the alternatives available to new teen mothers that don’t require them to take a pill every day or return every three months for a shot.
“Birth control pills, those can be a Chevy,” he said. “If the Chevy doesn’t work for you, we have Fords. We have Mercedes-Benzes. We have other options.”
He said the alternatives — intrauterine devices and Norplant arm implants — are “highly effec-tive” and require virtually no continual compliance measures of the teens during their effectiveness periods, which range from three to 10 years.
Hampton said he began enrolling teenage mothers into the study about six months ago and is comparing the repeat pregnancy rate of patients on other forms of birth control with those who chose to go with the long-term IUD options.
Participants are grouped by the type of birth control method they choose — Hampton noted that any method is better than nothing — and are asked to come in at certain times after the birth of their last child to check in with researchers.
After six months, he said, the girls are also asked to fill out a questionnaire that centers on their long-term goals and medical issues like depression, which he suspects may have a strong link to teenage pregnancy.
In total, Hampton said, the program hopes to follow the girls for about two years.  
“We’re just trying to discover new knowledge and find a better way of doing things,” he said. 
Finding teens to participate in the study, however, has turned out to be somewhat of a challenge.
The study currently has 11 mothers participating, far fewer than the 60 Hampton hoped to have in the program, a rate that is “much slower than we thought it would be.”
One of the reasons, he said, could be that a surprising number of new teen moms want to have another child in the near future for one reason or another.
“I’ll bet if we went and sat and talked with them,” Hampton said, “we’d be amazed by the number who want another, and they don’t want to wait too long.”
Nancy Britton, a counselor at the ECISD’s Teen Parent Center in Odessa, said some girls want more children because they believe it brings more unity to their family.
Others, she said, sometimes are pressured by the father to have more children.
Britton said the desire to have more than one child at a young age often stems from socioeconomic circumstances that may not tout the advantages of education.
Regardless of the myriad social factors behind repeat teen pregnancies, she said, Hampton’s pro-gram certainly seems to be a step in the right direction.
“I think it’s fantastic,” Britton said. “I think anything they don’t have to think about on a daily ba-sis is a good thing.”
Many of the center’s students, she said, already have chosen to go with the implants. 
“A lot of the girls who have them have been very happy with it,” Britton said. “They’ve been thrilled.”
And that seems to be the case for at least one local teen mother.
Shanique Samuels, a 17-year-old with a 3-year-old son and a 7-month-old daughter who opted for the implant after the “unexpected” birth of her daughter, said getting one of the contraceptive im-plants has paid off.
Samuels said birth control pills tend to be difficult to take on a regular schedule — “I’ll forget or I’ll take it too late.” — so she said she opted for the longer-term implant. 
“Two is enough,” she said one afternoon, holding her son. “I got a girl and a boy. I don’t need any more. I’ve got my couple.”

IF YOU GO
>> If you’re a girl younger than 20 years old who is pregnant and would like to consider participating in Dr. Moss Hampton’s study, call his department at the Texas Tech University Health Sci-ences Center Odessa campus at 335-5233. Eligible girls may be paid for their participation.