Elsevier

Public Health

Volume 107, Issue 2, March 1993, Pages 135-139
Public Health

The UPA score and teenage pregnancy

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0033-3506(05)80411-1Get rights and content

Teenage motherhood is often said to be the result of deficient contraceptive and abortion services. Using data from the Public Health Common Data Set (PH CDS) we demonstrate two important effects in a Regional Health Authority: higher rates of conception are related to a live birth rather than an abortion pregnancy outcome; District Health Authorities (DHAs) with high underprivileged area scores (UPA) are more likely to have high rates of conception in the teenage years than those districts with low scores.

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  • Area-level mortality and morbidity predict ‘abortion proportion’ in England and Wales

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    At area level it is often the case that deprived areas with a high teenage conception rate also have a low abortion proportion (Bradshaw, Finch, & Miles, 2005; Garlick, Ineichen, & Hudson, 1993). There are descriptive and correlational studies (Garlick et al., 1993; Griffiths & Kirby, 2000; Smith, 1993; Uren, Sheers, & Dattani, 2007; Wilkinson et al., 2006; Wilson, Brown, & Richards, 1992; Wood, 1996) and multivariate research (Bradshaw et al., 2005; Conrad, 2012; Diamond et al., 1999; Lee et al., 2004; McLeod, 2001) showing the inverse relationship between deprivation and abortion. There is also some questionnaire and survey research confirming the same pattern at individual level (Lo et al., 1994; Smith & Roberts, 2009; Wellings, Wadsworth, Johnson, Field, & Macdowell, 1999).

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