Teen condom use up over last 20 years

WASHINGTON -- Nearly half of high school students say they've had sex, yet progress has stalled in getting them to use condoms to protect against AIDS, government researchers reported yesterday.

Today, four of every 10 new HIV infections occur in people younger than 30, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the teen years, just as many youths become sexually active, are key for getting the safe-sex message across.

Using a long-standing survey of high school students' health, the CDC tracked how teen sexual behavior has changed over 20 years. The results are decidedly mixed.

About 60 percent of the sexually active students say they used condoms the last time they had sex, researchers said at the International AIDS Conference. That's up from the 46 percent using them in 1991.

"This is good news," said Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of CDC's HIV prevention center. But, "we need to do a lot more." Condom use hit a high of 63 percent in 2003.

Black students are most likely to heed the safe-sex message, yet their condom use dropped from a high of 70 percent in 1999 to 65 percent last year, the study found.

The proportion of high school students who've had sex is 47 percent today, down from 54 percent in 1991, and they typically start at age 16, CDC said. Black teens showed a bigger decrease, with 60 percent sexually active today, compared with 82 percent two decades ago.

Fifteen percent of high school students say they've had four or more partners, down from 19 percent in 1991.

Fenton said many school systems don't have strong enough sex education policies that include teaching teens about how to prevent HIV. But he cautioned that the CDC study can't link the abstinence-only policies pushed by Congress through the late 1990s and early 2000s to the stalled condom use.

While scientists were releasing new data at the meeting, AIDS activists marched across Washington to the White House to call for increased funding of HIV programs. Thirteen were arrested after tying dollar bills and pill bottles to the executive mansion's fence.