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Teen Pregnancy Rate Improving in Knox County
The Knox County Health Department says strides are being made to deal with a problem they say hasn't gone away among young people.

The Health Department says according to most recent statistics available from the state, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases appear to be headed downward.

Health Department Community Health Improvement Director Michele Fishburn says a nearly 14-percent teen pregnancy rate in the last available year of statistics -- 2006 -- may seem like a bad problem, but not as bad as it could be. "Percentage-wise, we're still higher than the State of Illinois (average), but our numbers have gone down" Fishburn said. "If you look at total numbers, we've actually gone down in the last year. So have total births. As long as our numbers are going down, it kind of skews it when the total births in the county go down. We're keeping our numbers under the age of 15 down, and the others are continuing to fall, so we're continuing to move on that."

The statewide average teen pregnancy rate was 10% in 2006 -- up three-tenths from a year prior. The 13.7% rate in Knox County in 2006 is down from 14.7% percent the year before.

The health department says of all reported cases of sexually-transmitted diseases in 2007, while the overall number is higher, among those aged 10 to 19, the numbers are down.
09 12 08 by Newsroom
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