Teen pregnancy profoundly, and in most cases negatively, affects the lives of those involved while costing the community millions of dollars through direct care, ancillary services, and the overall drain on the workforce.
Milwaukee is one of the Top Ten cities within the U.S. with the highest percentage of total births to teen mothers.
Teen pregnancy is at a crisis level in Milwaukee, and the If Truth Be Told report that was compiled by United Way of Greater Milwaukee and its community partners provides a straightforward assessment of the situation.
Read the executive summary
In order to break the cycle of poverty that is fed by teen pregnancy, United Way of Greater Milwaukee is spearheading an effort to bring the issue to the forefront of public attention. Despite the hard work and dedication by many individuals and organizations within the community to address teen pregnancy, most efforts have not provided significant results. To address the teen pregnancy crisis, United Way . . .
Milwaukee has one of the nation's highest percentages of births to teens, and rates of teen pregnancy. In 1999, 30 percent of Milwaukee teen births were to teens that already had one or more children. In 2005, 59 percent of students reported that they already had sexual intercourse. The 15-17-year-old average birthrate from 1996-2004 for non-Hispanic African American females is 91.3 percent. (http://www.ci.mil.wi.us/ImageLibrary/Groups/healthAuthors/DCP/PDFs/finalteenpregnancyfactsheetrev406.pdf)
37 percent of sexually active MPS high school students report having intercourse with four or more partners 18.5 percent of MPS middle school students reported their first sexual intercourse occurred under age 13. 26.3 percent of sexually active MPS high school students did not use a condom during their last sexual intercourse.
42 percent of girls younger than 15 years reported their first intercourse was nonconsensual. From one-half to two-thirds of teenage mothers were sexually assaulted prior to their first pregnancy and between 30 percent and 44 percent had been victims of rape or attempted rape. 48 percent of MPS high school girls believed that if a girl says yes to sex and then changes her mind and a boy has sex with her anyway, it is not sexual assault.
The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative through Healthy Girls is sponsored by Aurora Health Care through the Healthy Girls Challenge Grant.
United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Serve Marketing produce Baby Can Wait marketing and resources that receive national attention.
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United Way of Greater Milwaukee would like to acknowledge the creative and effective efforts of SERVE, a nonprofit ad agency that has developed the look and messaging for the media-driven teen pregnancy prevention campaign.