Pregnancy & Infant Health
Healthy childhood development starts with healthy pregnancies and healthy infants. This section focuses on maternal behaviours while pregnant, indicators that measure the health of births in our community, and infant feeding.
Teenage Pregnancy and Live Birth Rates
What does this measure?
The teen pregnancy rate estimates the number of pregnancies (resulting in live births, still births and therapeutic abortions) per 1,000 females age 15 -19 years. This definition of teen pregnancy rate are generally considered to greatly underestimate of the true rate of teen pregnancies as it does not capture medical abortions or miscarriages. Given this limitation, another important indicator to consider is live births to teenage mothers (aged 15-19) per 1,000 females (aged 15-19). This rate is known as the teen fertility rate or the teen live birth rate.
Why is this important?
According to the Canadian Paediatric Society, pregnancy carries significant physical and psychosocial risks for adolescents. Increased health risks to the young pregnant woman include a greater risk of developing problems such as anaemia, hypertension, eclampsia and depressive disorders. Infants born to teenage mothers are at greater risk for preterm birth, low birth weight, increased infant mortality, development problems, learning difficulties, hearing and visual impairments, and chronic respiratory problems. Teen pregnancy is significant from a determinants of health perspective because teen pregnancy is more common among disadvantaged teens, and pregnancy in the teen years can be a significant predictor of other social, educational and employment barriers in later life.
How are Hastings and Prince Edward Counties doing?
The teenage pregnancy rate and live birth rate in Hastings and Prince Edward Counties (HPEC) has decreased from 2013-2018, with some fluctuations, but has remained much higher than Ontario as a whole. HPEC is consistently in the top 25% of public health regions in Ontario for both teen pregnancy and teen live birth rates. For more comparisons of teen birth rate, teen live birth rate (called teen fertility rate) and other reproductive health indicators, see the Reproductive Health Snapshot from Public Health Ontario.
Notes about data
Data for teen pregnancy rates was unavailable for 2019 at time of productive. Teen pregnancies rates greatly underestimate true pregnancy rates because the measure used here only includes pregnancies that result in live births, still births, and therapeutic abortions.