Impact of a school-based comprehensive program for pregnant teens on their contraceptive use, future contraceptive intention, and desire for more children.

In response to multiple problems faced by pregnant or parenting teens, or both, many alternative school-based comprehensive programs have been established to provide the teens with multiple services. However, few of these programs have been evaluated to assess their impact on the teens. In this study, we have made a systematic evaluation of such a school-based comprehensive program-the Paquin School Program in Baltimore City-to assess its impact on contraceptive use, future contraceptive intention, and desire for more children. We used data collected from a sample of 371 pregnant and parenting teens who attended the Paquin School Program between 1999 and 2001, and from a sample of 506 comparable teens, who did not attend the Program. Our findings showed that the percentages of the Paquin School enrollees who were using contraceptives or who expressed intention to use contraceptives in the future were higher than those of their counterpart nonenrollees from the comparison schools. The findings also showed that the use of Depo-Provera and desire for no more children were higher among the Paquin School enrollees than among the enrollees from the comparison schools. Because the Paquin School enrollees self-selected into its program, some unobserved differences between them and their counterpart nonenrollees might have affected the outcomes of this article. However, the consistent patterns of positive outcomes for the Paquin School enrollees with regard to contraceptive use, future intention to use contraceptives, and desire for no more children, compared to those from the comparison schools, seem to suggest that the Paquin School's alternative comprehensive program has been successful in its effort to promote family planning. One possible reason for this success of the effort to promote family planning is its integration with the multiple services of the comprehensive program of the Paquin School that enables its teens to plan their fertility.