Condoms and AIDS prevention present special problems. Americans can't seem to look at AIDS as a public health issue because it has a sexual component, she believes.
"We should compare AIDS with tuberculosis. People recognize that controlling TB is in everybody's best interest. In the same way, greater use of condoms is in everybody's best interest. It is one way to keep the rate of HIV infection as low as possible," she argues. "The more condoms are used, the better it is for all of us."
Why are condoms so important?
"Because they are the most common method of birth control used by teens," says Morrison, "and virtually the only one they use when they have sex for the first time. Few teenage girls go on birth control pills before having sex for the first time, so if they aren't using condoms, they aren't using any kind of birth control."
Morrison also thinks that condoms should be distributed at little or no cost in schools or restroom vending machines. Many teenagers, she says, don't have a lot of spending money and many are embarrassed because it can be very intimidating for them to buy condoms at the drug store. The cost of condoms, she says, is much less than the cost of a pregnancy and far less than the cost of controlling a sexually-transmitted disease.
"Teenagers need extra help in setting up good health habits," says Morrison. "The
single best predictor of using condoms in the future is having used them in the past.
We should want our children to learn safe sexual behavior just as we teach them what
moderate and responsible drinking is, even before they're old enough to drink. We should
also tell them clearly and frankly what our family values about sex are
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Contact: Joel Schwarz
joels@u.washington.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington
16-May-1997