Adolescent Sexual Health Facts

EyesOpenIowa’s  Adolescent Sexual Health Fact information pages are a broad-ranging summary of data covering the sexual health and health-related behaviors of Iowa’s adolescents ages 15-19 years. Both county and our state as a whole data are available below:

Comparing the data:

There are important differences in State of Iowa stats and EyesOpenIowa stats on teen birth rates.

EyesOpenIowa uses the national standard for reporting teen births, which is the birth rate per 1,000 teen girls in the county/state. EOI uses this so that we can compare the differences in the number of teen births between counties of different sizes. It is important to use the national standard, so we can compare Iowa and county specific teen birth rates to each other and nationwide.

The State of Iowa, however, uses the number of teen births per 1,000 BIRTHS in the county. This is not the teen birth rate but is rather the teen birth ratio. The state includes a warning about this on their website but not always on the report of teen birth rate data.

For data questions please contact Shari Stucker.