Salem loses funding for teen pregnancy prevention program

Salem loses funding for teen pregnancy prevention program


SALEM — For the last two years, Michael Madruga participated in an after-school program every Tuesday and Thursday in which he and his peers would brainstorm community service projects and learn teen pregnancy prevention.

"I really did enjoy going to that program," said Madruga, 17, a junior at Salem High. "It was just a place I could go and be able to help other people. It was a good place for me to be; it was keeping me out of trouble."

Students are distraught over the midyear elimination of a teen pregnancy prevention program that enrolled more than 200 Salem teenagers in the last four years.

The program fell victim to state budget cuts because Salem's teen birth rate is no longer among the top 25 communities in the state. Advocates of the program said it's like being punished for making progress.

"Department of Public Health is whittling down these evidence-based programs in the precise time when the birth rate is moving in the other direction," said Patricia Quinn, executive director of the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy

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Ouch!

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