Health and education leaders met Wednesday, Jan. 18, in Chapel Hill to announce a state goal to reduce North Carolina teen pregnancies. The Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign of North Carolina released the target of reducing the state’s teen pregnancy rate 30 percent by 2020.
North Carolina’s teen pregnancy rate has declined more than 50 percent since 1990 and experienced the biggest single year-to-year drop last year, according to recently released 2010 data. Despite significant improvements, North Carolina still holds the 14th highest teen pregnancy rate in the United States.
“Oh the heels of such great success, North Carolina needs to keep momentum in reducing teen pregnancy,” said Kay Phillips, executive director of APPCNC. “This goal is intended to help inspire and challenge people to keep working toward effective solutions.”
The state goal has been endorsed by more than 40 organizations, including the North Carolina Pediatric Society, the North Carolina School Boards Association, Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina, the Institute for Emerging Issues and the North Carolina Institute of Medicine.
In addition to announcing the state goal, APPCNC released a report called the North Carolina State of Adolescent Sexual Health and Action Plan. The report details the current extent of health issues in North Carolina as well as concrete steps parents, community leaders, schools and medical professionals can take to make North Carolina’s adolescents healthier.
The Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Campaign of North Carolina is a North Carolina nonprofit leader in preventing adolescent pregnancy through advocacy, collaboration and education.
Learn more at www.appcnc.org.
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Showing posts with label teens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teens. Show all posts
Monday, February 20, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Distracted Driving Awareness Campaign kicks off
Chapel Hill Police Department and the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Public Safety will kick off the Distracted Driving Awareness Campaign on Wednesday, Feb. 15.
The Town of Chapel Hill is considering a proposed ordinance to ban talking on hand-held cellphones and hands-free cellphones—or both—while driving on town streets. In conjunction with the proposed ordinance, the council asked that a program be developed to educate the public about the dangers of driving while talking or texting on cell phones. A public hearing on the proposed ordinance is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 20, in the Council Chamber of Chapel Hill Town Hall.
Drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. Younger, inexperienced drivers younger than 20 years old have the highest proportion of distraction-related fatal crashes. In addition, studies show that texting while driving can delay a driver's reaction time just as severely as having a blood alcohol content of a legally drunk driver.
Studies show that there is no difference in the risks between hands-free and hand-held cell phone conversations, both of which can result in inattention blindness, which occurs when the brain isn't seeing what is clearly visible because the drivers' focus is on the phone conversation and not on the road.
There are simple measures drivers can take to minimize distractions in the vehicle:
• Turn off phone or put it out of reach before starting the car.
• Alert callers of inability to take calls when driving by changing voicemail message.
• Make it a point not to call or text anyone who may be driving, such as during the commute to and from work or school, especially parents calling teen drivers.
• If there is a need to make an important call or respond to a text message, pull over to a safe place to do so.
For more information about the Distracted Driving Awareness Campaign, contact Catherine Lazorko, public information officer for the Town of Chapel Hill, at (919) 969-5055 or clazorko@townofchapelhill.org.
The Town of Chapel Hill is considering a proposed ordinance to ban talking on hand-held cellphones and hands-free cellphones—or both—while driving on town streets. In conjunction with the proposed ordinance, the council asked that a program be developed to educate the public about the dangers of driving while talking or texting on cell phones. A public hearing on the proposed ordinance is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 20, in the Council Chamber of Chapel Hill Town Hall.
Drivers who use hand-held devices are four times as likely to get into crashes serious enough to injure themselves. Younger, inexperienced drivers younger than 20 years old have the highest proportion of distraction-related fatal crashes. In addition, studies show that texting while driving can delay a driver's reaction time just as severely as having a blood alcohol content of a legally drunk driver.
Studies show that there is no difference in the risks between hands-free and hand-held cell phone conversations, both of which can result in inattention blindness, which occurs when the brain isn't seeing what is clearly visible because the drivers' focus is on the phone conversation and not on the road.
There are simple measures drivers can take to minimize distractions in the vehicle:
• Turn off phone or put it out of reach before starting the car.
• Alert callers of inability to take calls when driving by changing voicemail message.
• Make it a point not to call or text anyone who may be driving, such as during the commute to and from work or school, especially parents calling teen drivers.
• If there is a need to make an important call or respond to a text message, pull over to a safe place to do so.
For more information about the Distracted Driving Awareness Campaign, contact Catherine Lazorko, public information officer for the Town of Chapel Hill, at (919) 969-5055 or clazorko@townofchapelhill.org.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Hillsborough starts team aimed at alcohol law enforcement
The Hillsborough Police Department—in a partnership with the Orange County ABC Board and the Northern Orange Partnership for Alcohol and Drug Free Youth—has started an Alcohol Law Enforcement Response Team to focus on alcohol-related crimes enforcement.
The eight officers currently on the team have received additional training, including training on ABC laws and procedures; constitutional law and search and seizure; party dispersal; campus law enforcement options; and documentation and report writing. The ALERT officers will focus on:
• DWI and alcohol-related traffic enforcement
• Compliance operations targeting sales to underage buyers
• ABC enforcement
• Party response
• Public and youth education.
For more information, see the Jan. 11 edition of the News of Orange,
The eight officers currently on the team have received additional training, including training on ABC laws and procedures; constitutional law and search and seizure; party dispersal; campus law enforcement options; and documentation and report writing. The ALERT officers will focus on:
• DWI and alcohol-related traffic enforcement
• Compliance operations targeting sales to underage buyers
• ABC enforcement
• Party response
• Public and youth education.
For more information, see the Jan. 11 edition of the News of Orange,
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Teen driver safety smartphone app proposal wins UNC competition
It's every parent's nightmare. Each year in the United States, about 6,000 teens between the ages of 15 and 20 die in motor vehicle crashes.
But researchers from the Highway Safety Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are working on a mobile app to tackle the problem.
For years, the center has designed programs that reduce young driver crashes and the resulting injuries and fatalities. Its initiatives include graduated driver licensing systems, a concept developed and championed by the center, which have been adopted in North Carolina and many other states. The systems are designed to give young drivers substantial practice under safe conditions.
Now, the center wants to make sure that parents have the tools to help improve the potentially life-saving practice when their teens get behind the wheel.
UNC safety researchers are the winners of the first Carolina Apps Competition, co-sponsored by the office of the UNC Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovate@Carolina. A Highway Safety Research Center team will develop a mobile app that will get critical safety information into the hands of parents and teens as they begin the graduated driver licensing process.
Barbara Entwisle, vice chancellor for research, said projects that turn research into useful products for the public are exactly what her office wants to support.
"We want to encourage Carolina faculty, staff and students to think creatively about ways their research can benefit the real world," Entwisle said. "The Highway Safety Research Center's findings will inform and improve the teen driving experience through an easily accessible and engaging mobile app. It's exciting to see Carolina-born ideas move out into the community." Arthur Goodwin, senior research associate and project leader at the center, said his team saw the app competition as a way to translate years of research for public use, using the advanced technological capabilities of smartphones to deliver individualized guidance to parents and teens.
Judith Cone, special assistant to the chancellor, said potentially the app is just a start, as supporting the application of faculty and student research is a key goal of UNC's Innovate@Carolina initiative.
"This has the potential to be a great model for how our university can use all of the technology available to us, to experiment and to showcase the incredibly important work being done here," Cone said. "Our only dilemma in picking this project was that the application pool was so impressive."
With the competition behind them, the team will now work with the Carolina App Competition selection committee to advance the project through the design and programming phase. And according to center Director David Harkey, it can't come a moment too soon.
"My 15-year-old daughter just got her driving permit," Harkey said. "I need this app."
But researchers from the Highway Safety Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are working on a mobile app to tackle the problem.
For years, the center has designed programs that reduce young driver crashes and the resulting injuries and fatalities. Its initiatives include graduated driver licensing systems, a concept developed and championed by the center, which have been adopted in North Carolina and many other states. The systems are designed to give young drivers substantial practice under safe conditions.
Now, the center wants to make sure that parents have the tools to help improve the potentially life-saving practice when their teens get behind the wheel.
UNC safety researchers are the winners of the first Carolina Apps Competition, co-sponsored by the office of the UNC Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovate@Carolina. A Highway Safety Research Center team will develop a mobile app that will get critical safety information into the hands of parents and teens as they begin the graduated driver licensing process.
Barbara Entwisle, vice chancellor for research, said projects that turn research into useful products for the public are exactly what her office wants to support.
"We want to encourage Carolina faculty, staff and students to think creatively about ways their research can benefit the real world," Entwisle said. "The Highway Safety Research Center's findings will inform and improve the teen driving experience through an easily accessible and engaging mobile app. It's exciting to see Carolina-born ideas move out into the community." Arthur Goodwin, senior research associate and project leader at the center, said his team saw the app competition as a way to translate years of research for public use, using the advanced technological capabilities of smartphones to deliver individualized guidance to parents and teens.
Judith Cone, special assistant to the chancellor, said potentially the app is just a start, as supporting the application of faculty and student research is a key goal of UNC's Innovate@Carolina initiative.
"This has the potential to be a great model for how our university can use all of the technology available to us, to experiment and to showcase the incredibly important work being done here," Cone said. "Our only dilemma in picking this project was that the application pool was so impressive."
With the competition behind them, the team will now work with the Carolina App Competition selection committee to advance the project through the design and programming phase. And according to center Director David Harkey, it can't come a moment too soon.
"My 15-year-old daughter just got her driving permit," Harkey said. "I need this app."
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