State Grant Targets Teenage Pregnancy
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Long Beach has received $800,000 for a campaign to curb teenage pregnancy.
The city was targeted for the state grant under Gov. Pete Wilson’s Partnership for Responsible Parenting initiative, which identified 80 ZIP codes with the highest incidence of teenage pregnancy. Five of the ZIP codes were in Long Beach.
David Souleles, manager of the city’s preventive health bureau, said the 29-month grant announced last week will be divided among 18 agencies offering services such as peer counseling, job training, outreach and parenting education.
“It’s not just a matter of telling [teenagers] not to get pregnant or how not to get pregnant,” he said. “It’s looking at all of the factors of how someone’s going to get pregnant as a teenager.”
In 1994, 13% of the nearly 10,000 births in Long Beach were by women between the ages of 15 and 19. By comparison, teenagers were responsible for 12% of all the state’s births the previous year.
High schools within the specific Long Beach ZIP codes will be a major focus of the effort, Souleles said.
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