Jozkowski Report Recommends Stronger Focus on Sex Education

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Kristen Jozkowski

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Kristen Jozkowski, University of Arkansas assistant professor of community health promotion, recommends state education officials put more emphasis on sex education in schools to reduce the rate of teen pregnancy and improve educational and work opportunities for women.

The recommendations come in a report requested by the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas, an organization committed to promoting academic achievement among the state’s women and girls and improving the economic status and financial competence of Arkansas women and girls.

The foundation asked Jozkowski to research and write a report on the current state of sexual and reproductive health in Arkansas and its impact on educational attainment. Jozkowski’s report, “Delivering Better Education: Impact of Teen Pregnancy and Birth on Education in Arkansas,” is one of three reports on women’s issues that the women’s organization released in a partnership with the Clinton Health Matters Initiative at an event Wednesday at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock.

The other two reports are titled “The Voices of Women: Perceptions of the Status of Women in Arkansas” and “Our Common Journey: Linking the Education of Women and Girls and Arkansas’s Economic Transition.”

The overall mission of the Women’s Foundation of Arkansas is to promote philanthropy among women and to help women and girls achieve their full potential.

Jozkowski teaches and conducts research in the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas and is also a Research Fellow with the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction based at Indiana University.

Jozkowski’s report primarily focuses on sex education, citing it as a cost-effective primary prevention strategy that provides youth with the age-appropriate information they need to make healthy decisions before they engage in sexual activity, but the report also looks at school-based health centers as a promising approach to increasing teens’ access to affordable and effective contraception.

Jozkowski found that Arkansas had the third-highest teen pregnancy rate and teen birth rate in the United States among teens ages 15-19, based on the most recent state data available, Jozkowski said. The teen pregnancy rate in Arkansas is 28 percent higher than the national average – 73 versus 57 pregnancies per 1,000 teens – and the teen birth rate is 69 percent higher than the national average – 45.7 versus 27 births per 1,000 teens – among young women ages 15-19.

Compared with their peers across the country, teens in Arkansas report higher rates of having ever engaged in sexual activity, engaging in sexual intercourse within the last three months, having had four or more sexual partners, and initiating sex before age 13, Jozkowski said.

She concluded the report by recommending that state policymakers, school districts, health-care providers and parents take a coordinated approach to the problem by considering six action steps:

• Continue and improve investment in sex education in Arkansas
• Improve sex education standards and guidelines in Arkansas schools and school-based health centers
• Improve access to sexual health services in school-based and community-based clinics
• Provide educational support for teen mothers
• Improve family and community involvement in sex education
• Continue research efforts toward better understanding the impacts of teen pregnancy and childbirth on the economic outcomes for women and Arkansas.

The report can be read online.

 “Sex education is an important strategy to reduce unintended pregnancy among teens because effective sex education focuses on delaying sex among abstinent teens and promoting the use of condoms and other forms of contraception among sexually active teens,” she said. “School-based sex education provides communities with the opportunity to work with youth and their families to promote healthy behaviors. Although parents can be the primary sex educators for their children, we know that, nationwide, parents overwhelmingly support sex education being offered in schools.”

Arkansas is one of only 14 states that do not require schools to provide either sex education or education about HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Arkansas law states that abstinence must be stressed despite the fact that research has consistently demonstrated that abstinence-only programs are ineffective in reducing negative sexual health outcomes among teens, Jozkowski said.