Teens and Sex

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Anchor lead: A very low percentage of sexually active teens use protection, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Fewer than one in ten sexually active teenagers use recommended protection, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study finds. Maria Trent, head of adolescent medicine at Johns Hopkins, says the current pandemic has made the situation worse.

Trent: We’re also not screening people during this time of Covid, which further exacerbates the problem that we might see in young people who are particularly at risk, those who are fifteen to twenty-five are at most risk. We need to start thinking about how we are going to address other infectious diseases, even during the Covid pandemic, even when its over, I think we’re going to have to have a plan for how we’re going to take care of patients, to screen people for STDs, to get them treated, to get their partners treated, we really are going to have to work on that.   :29

Trent says barriers to teens coming into clinics for testing and treatment are higher now than ever, and worries that for some young women, the complications of untreated STIs may include infertility down the road. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.