Data from a pregnancy prevention program operating through school-based clinics in four New York City junior high schools suggest that an intensive risk-identification and case-management approach may be effective among very young adolescents. Among students given a referral to a family planning clinic for contraception, the proportion who visited the clinic and obtained a method rose from 11% in the year before the program began to 76% in the program's third year. Pregnancy rates among teenagers younger than 15 decreased by 34% over four years in the program schools. In the fourth year of the program, the pregnancy rate in one school that was unable to continue the program was almost three times the average rate for the other three schools (16.5 pregnancies per 1,000 female students vs. 5.8 per 1,000).
(Family Planning Perspectives, 29:173-176 & 197, 1997)