Teenage pregnancy prevention redux

My last post regarding the New York City school system and its provision of Plan B contraception was met with a number of replies that took issue with my characterization of the problem. Perhaps I have been less than artful in my explanation of this issue.

Public health is at its core a preventative specialty. As many know, prevention can be of a primary, secondary, or tertiary nature. In most areas of medicine, primary measures of prevention are lauded as the most beneficial, and tertiary measures are considered a failure in a population context. As a simple example, hypertension and its complications can prevented in a primary fashion by proper diet and exercise, in a secondary way through medications, and finally, the complications of hypertension, such as heart disease, can be treated in a tertiary manner through more invasive means such as surgery. Traumatic brain injury due to firearms is another example. Tertiary means of prevention such as treatment of brain injury by the neurosurgical crowd is certainly not the ideal. Secondary prevention such as gun safety education is not considered adequate by some segments of the population.  The true primary preventative intervention would be to ban guns altogether, and, again, certain voices in and out of medicine advocate for that as well.

Why should prevention of teenage pregnancy be any different? Would it not be better to facilitate a primary prevention model for the problem? Because it doesn’t work? The same thing could be said for the obesity problem, yet millions of dollars are spent in figuring out how to provide the health education necessary to convince millions of us to adjust our diets and eating habits (including the banning of certain sizes of sodas in a particular jurisdiction), clearly a primary prevention model. If the current model of primary prevention of teenage pregnancy is ineffective, then it would seem that there should be a push to find a model of primary intervention that does work and not be satisfied with secondary and tertiary results. Our profession doesn’t accept this in most other areas of medicine.

The point is, this continuum of preventative measures is found all throughout medicine, and in my opinion, the New York City school system’s move to provide Plan B is an example of secondary or even tertiary prevention, and could be construed as a failure in the public health context as outlined above.

Dr. K

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Tony Francis]

Primary prevention is abstinence.

[Quaid]

Clear distinction has to be made between sex and prgnancy. Although related,they are 2 different issues. We all forget oyr teenage years and pretend that we are saints.