Center for Applied Research and Technical Assistance, inc. (CARTA)

Despite improvements in recent years in its rate of births to teen mothers, Baltimore City continues to outpace most other major U.S. cities. In the year 2000, according to a recent report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Baltimore had a teen birthrate of 86 births per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19, higher than 76 of the nation's 100 largest cities. Between 1990 and 2000, Baltimore's teen birthrate declined 26.8 percent. This improvement, though significant, was far smaller than the declines experienced by some other major cities during the same period. St. Louis saw its teen birthrate drop 42.2 percent between 1990 and 2000, and Detroit's dropped 39.3 percent. Although Baltimore has made significant strides in addressing this issue, much remains to be done.

The Abell Foundation is a longtime supporter of teen pregnancy prevention efforts in Baltimore City. In 1998, amid growing concerns about Baltimore City's high teen pregnancy and birth rates, the Foundation produced a report, Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Efforts in Baltimore City, documenting findings of a survey of adolescent pregnancy prevention providers in Baltimore City, and outlining recommendations for improvements in adolescent pregnancy prevention services. In June 2001, the Family League of Baltimore City produced Paths to Reducing Teen Pregnancy in Baltimore, a follow-up to the Abell report that assessed the training and capacity-building needs of Baltimore City's teen pregnancy prevention providers.

These two reports reveal the following challenges that undermine efforts to effectively address teen pregnancy in Baltimore City:

• Many teen pregnancy prevention programs don't track basic data on client visits and services provided to clients, making it difficult to ensure continuity of care or assess program effectiveness.
• Utilization of programs is low; only 20 percent of teen pregnancy prevention programs operate at capacity.
• Many programs do not incorporate best practices identified in current teen pregnancy prevention research.
• Coordination of teen pregnancy prevention efforts in Baltimore is limited.

In response to these findings, The Abell Foundation asked CARTA to document best practices from cities that have achieved significant reductions in teen pregnancy and birth rates in recent years, and to conduct a strategic planning process to assess how Baltimore City can more effectively address the issue. With a grant of $35,859 from The Abell Foundation, CARTA began its charge by gathering demographic and teen birthrate data from a number of large cities, and then selected two cities, Detroit and St. Louis, for a more in-depth analysis. CARTA developed information from key sources from those cities about teen pregnancy prevention practices, and conducted research on best practices nationally, and on teen pregnancy prevention services in Baltimore City. This information was presented to representatives from Baltimore City's youth-serving agencies at a strategic planning session in July 2003. Participants discussed policy, programming, funding and advocacy support efforts needed to improve teen pregnancy prevention initiatives, and identified a range of critical and feasible efforts that could lead to further reductions in the City's rate of teen childbearing.

Based on the information gathered from the July 2003 working group session, together with additional information from the comparison cities, CARTA has compiled a list of recommended strategies to address the teen birthrate in Baltimore. These recommendations will be shared at a second working group session in 2004, when participants will be asked to outline action steps needed to implement the recommended strategies. After the second working group session, CARTA will prepare and disseminate a policy brief outlining recommendations.