Family Planning

Goal: Improve pregnancy planning and prevent unintended pregnancy.

Nearly half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended,1 and unintended pregnancy is linked to many negative outcomes for both women and infants. Healthy People 2030 focuses on reducing unintended pregnancy by increasing use of birth control and family planning services.

Unintended pregnancy is linked to outcomes like preterm birth and postpartum depression. Interventions to increase use of birth control are critical for preventing unintended pregnancies. Birth control and family planning services can also help increase the length of time between pregnancies, which can improve health for women and their infants.

Adolescents are at especially high risk for unintended pregnancy. Although teen pregnancy and birth rates have gone down in recent years, close to 200,000 babies are born to teen mothers every year in the United States.2 Linking adolescents to youth-friendly health care services can help prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections in this age group.

Objective Status

  • 2 Target met or exceeded
  • 1 Improving
  • 7 Little or no detectable change
  • 1 Getting worse
  • 2 Baseline only
  • 1 Developmental
  • 0 Research

Learn more about objective types

References

1.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019). Unintended Pregnancy. Retrieved from: https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/contraception/unintendedpregnancy/index.htm

2.

Finer, L.B. & Zolna, M.R. (2016). Declines in Unintended Pregnancy in the United States, 2008-2011. New England Journal of Medicine, 374(9), 843-52. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa1506575