BACKGROUND:As attention to the potential negative outcomes of childhood trauma has grown, so have calls for schools to take an active role in supporting students experiencing trauma. These calls extend beyond efforts initiated by individual schools to include those mandated by state law, which largely focus on teacher training and on screening for adversity.
METHODS:This article explores the evidence base and limitations for current approaches in state law and explores how policies to address other student health, safety, and wellness issues can help either ameliorate or exacerbate students' experiences with trauma.
RESULTS:Few trainings for nonclinical staff have rigorous evidence of effectiveness, and based on evidence of teacher trainings on other topics, cannot work in environments that do not actively reinforce and encourage the application of that knowledge. Trainings also largely do not acknowledge the structures and systems, including systemic racism within schools, that may contribute to disparate rates of adversity for black and American Indian and Alaskan Native children. Screening carries several risks, including confounding adversity with experiencing trauma, missing broader contextual adversity, and potentially retraumatizing children.
CONCLUSIONS:State policymakers need to take a more holistic approach in creating policies to support students experiencing trauma.
Objective: Teen birth rates in the U.S. have declined significantly, with the most recent decline spanning two decades; but patterns of teen childbearing differ substantially across states. Although many policy and expenditure decisions are made at the state level, few studies have examined the relationship between state policies intended to reduce teen births or enhance opportunity and the teen birth rate. Methods: Data from 1989 to 2008 for all 50 states were used in analyses combining time-varying effects models and multilevel modeling, allowing the identification of associations between teen birth rates and state policies that affect women's health and their educational and employment opportunities, as well as other state characteristics that vary over time, while accounting for between-state differences in the teen birth rate. Results: We find that, at the state level, greater family planning expenditures, higher public assistance benefits, and the proportion of children who are uninsured, are associated with lower teen birth rates and that this relationship has remained constant over the past 18 years. Higher rates of female labor force participation, a lower poverty rate, a higher freshman graduation rate, higher levels of education funding, and a higher proportion of the population with a Bachelor's degree are also associated with lower teen birth rates rates. Further research on how public assistance policies affect teen childbearing is needed. Conclusion: This study suggests that state-level efforts to provide reproductive health care and to improve educational and employment prospects for state residents are associated with lower teen birth rates.
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