What's Happening

By Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, MCHES | May 24, 2017
Senior Editor, ETR

A group of developmental neuroscientists walks into a room. They sit down with some sexual health experts. They all talk about ways to support healthy adolescent development.

What happens then? As it turns out, some pretty amazing things.

By Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, MCHES | April 7, 2017
Senior Editor, ETR

Teen pregnancy rates are down. A wide range of statistics and figures show this. If you work in the field of adolescent health, you’ve certainly already heard this news.

Think for a moment about how you hold that information in your mind. Perhaps you remember the rate of births per 1,000 females aged 15-19 years. You might think about a national map that shows state rankings in teen birth rates. Maybe colorful bar graphs or pie charts come to mind.

By Elizabeth McDade-Montez, PhD | March 28, 2017
Senior Research Associate, ETR

TV is not what it used to be. Over the past decade, we have seen a range of new methods of content delivery (Netflix, AmazonVideo, Hulu), new ways of watching (bingeing on favorites, catching short segments on YouTube, checking out cute kittens suggested by friends on Facebook), and new ways of calculating ratings.

Unfortunately, although television platforms have clearly modernized over time, television themes and stereotypes around gender and sexuality have not. 

By Gina Lepore, MEd | March 16, 2017
Research Associate, ETR

 “Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”

This saying is usually credited to Oscar Wilde, probably erroneously, but I love it anyway! It brings home an essential truth. When we talk about norms related to sex and sexual consent, we are often actually talking about norms related to power.

By Ayn N. Whyte, MS—Diné | March 14, 2017
STD/HIV/AIDS Prevention Program Manager, Albuquerque Area Indian Health Board

As many of our communities prepare to recognize National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, I am compelled to honor the group of individuals who envisioned and made this day a reality. I am blessed to work today with many of these people in raising awareness and promoting testing among our people. 

By Pamela Anderson, PhD | February 9, 2017
Senior Research Associate, ETR

I’m having a sentimental parent moment. Our three-year-old is looking at the iPad. She is trying to defy gravity by watching her show upside down. The iPad falls on her face. She falls off the couch and hits the floor.

Our almost-seven-year-old immediately sprints over to help and console her sister. 

By Lizanne Reynolds, JD | January 30, 2017
dfusion

I am excited to be working on a new dfusion program called Live Your Best Life AHORA! This is an innovative teen pregnancy prevention and sexual risk reduction program for rural Hispanic youth and their parents in California’s Central Valley. Our program partner is the California Health Collaborative (CHC), which has worked closely with the community for many years to promote healthy practices.

By ETR | January 23, 2017

Do you know graduate students in public health? Epidemiology? How about education, psychology, sociology or related fields? Do they have an interest in sexual and reproductive health?

We’d love you to let them know about one of the finest summer internship opportunities around: the 2017 Kirby Summer Internship at ETR.

By Jennifer Salerno, DNP | January 5, 2017
Founder, Possibilities for Change

How sexually active—and sexually risky—are today’s teens?

Scientific studies continue to support the notion that teens today actually have less sex than their parents did as teens. Yet nearly one in four teens will become pregnant by age 20, and half of the new STDs in the U.S. each year occur among people between the ages of 15 and 24. 

By Karin Coyle, PhD | December 19, 2016
Senior Research Associate, ETR

ETR is delighted to announce the release of our report on the 2016 Kirby Summit. If you work with adolescents to address sexual and reproductive health, I strongly encourage you to check it out.

Here’s why. We deliberately designed this invited Summit to challenge and disrupt what we thought we knew about adolescent health behaviors.

By Laura Perkins, MLS | December 15, 2016
Product Editor, ETR

Thought about menstrual periods lately? Maybe, maybe not. But if you were a pre-menstrual kid, teetering on the edge of puberty, you'd probably be thinking about them a lot.

By BA Laris, MPH | December 13, 2016
Research Associate, ETR | Personal pronouns: She, her, hers

We were excited for the much-anticipated release of The National Center for Transgender Equality’s new 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey Report. 

By Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, MCHES | November 10, 2016
Senior Editor, ETR

STD rates are up. The CDC noted in a recent press release that reported STDs are at an “unprecedented high” in the U.S.

This sort of news is undeniably discouraging for those of us working the sexual and reproductive health arena. After all, we’ve been feeling rather upbeat and hopeful about the impressive drop in unplanned teen pregnancies—rates are down more than half over the past 20 years. 

By ETR | November 4, 2016

Two heads are better than one! It’s an old but familiar adage. We have an updated version we’d like to suggest: two contraceptives are better than one.

ETR researchers have just published an article in The Journal of Primary Prevention that examines the frequency of dual contraceptive use among youth in alternative schools. Information about this population is particularly important because they are more likely than other youth to engage in risky sexual behaviors. To date, there has been no research examining dual use contraception in this group.