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September 24, 2007Teen Girls Report Abusive Boyfriends Try to Get Them Pregnant |
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From University of California Davis: Seven years ago, Elizabeth Miller was a volunteer physician in a community-based clinic in Boston, Mass., which offered confidential services to teens. That nagging question inspired Miller, now a pediatrician with UC Davis Children's Hospital, to dedicate her career to trying to understand the unique characteristics of adolescent partner violence. In a new qualitative clinical study published in the September-October issue of the journal Ambulatory Pediatrics, Miller and her research colleagues report that a quarter of the teenage girls interviewed for the study -- all of whom had histories of abusive relationships -- say their partners were actively trying to get them pregnant. The study, available online today, is the first in the general adolescent health literature to document the role of abusive partners in promoting teen pregnancy. Miller's study is based on interviews with 61 girls from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds with a known history of intimate partner violence living in the poorest neighborhoods in Boston. They just completed a clinic-based survey of 825 youth in the Boston area designed to address the prevalence of intimate partner violence and related behaviors among boys and girls seeking confidential care, and they are in the process of designing a national study to address these same issues. Miller has also designed a study that would test interventions for partner violence in family planning clinics among women ages 16 to 24 years, and she is planning a study of dating violence intervention to be conducted in school-based clinics in California and Massachusetts.
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