Trends in Canadian national and provincial/territorial teen pregnancy rates: 2001-2010.

Trends in teen pregnancy rates are a key indicator of young women's sexual and reproductive health and overall well-being. Previously available published data on teen pregnancy rates for Canada included the years 1974 to 2006. The current study extends these data by calculating teen pregnancy rates at the provincial/territorial and national levels for the years 2007 to 2010. For analytical purposes, teen pregnancy rate trend data were generated for the periods 2001 to 2010, 2001 to 2005, and 2006 to 2010. From 2001 to 2010, the Canadian teen pregnancy rate declined by 20.3%. During the period 2006 to 2010, the national teen pregnancy rate increased by 1.1% and in four provinces the rate increased by 15.1% or more (New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Manitoba). Longer-term (1990 to 2010) trend data indicates that the teen pregnancy rate in Canada increased 4.9% from 1990 to 1994, then declined in each consecutive year to 2006, a decrease of 40.8%, and then increased slightly from 2006 to 2010. The overall teen pregnancy rate in Canada remains significantly lower than in the United States and in England and Wales where rates have also fallen since 2001. Abortion rate data for Canada are subject to a number of limitations. A particular limitation of this study is that teen pregnancy rate calculations were affected by the underreporting of abortions in some settings and the lack of precise age-related data on abortions conducted in some parts of Canada. For the current study, adjustments were made to the British Columbia clinic abortion data to compensate for underreporting. Imputation methods previously used to calculate teen pregnancy rates in Canada were employed when age data on clinic abortions were not available. The findings are discussed in relation to effective policies and programs to reduce unwanted teen pregnancy that include a focus on youth development and socioeconomic factors, access to effective contraception, and broadly-based sexual health education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]