CDC: Risky Health Behaviors Lowering among US Students

U.S. teens appear to engage less in risky health behaviors, meaning they’re having less sex, doing fewer drugs and smoking fewer cigarettes than their peers did in 1991, a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed on Wednesday.

The report, simply called “2007 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey,” collected data from 14,041 students in grades nine to 12 including blacks, whites and Hispanics, as these three populations are representative for the US.

Overall, the report found that Hispanic teenage students are more likely to engage in risky health behaviors. When it comes to sexual intercourse, the percentage of black students who reported having sex dropped from 82 percent in 1991 to 66 percent in 2007. In white students’ case, the percentage dropped from 50 percent in 1991 to 44 percent in 2007. By contrast, 53 percent of Hispanic teenagers reported having had intercourse and in 2007, that number was 52 percent.

"However, our Hispanic students remain at greater risk than white and black students for certain health-related behaviors and have not matched the progress made over time by black and white students in reducing some sexual risk behaviors,” Howell Wechsler, the CDC's director of the Division of Adolescent and School Health, said, according to the Washington Post.

The findings were pretty much the same when it came to other risky health behaviors, with Hispanic teenagers showing little improvement. Therefore, they were more likely than black or white students to have attempted suicide, or use cocaine, heroin or ecstasy. About 10 to 11 percent of Hispanic students said they attempted suicide compared with around 7 percent of whites and 8 percent of blacks.

They were also more likely to be in a car with a driver who had been drinking. They also preferred losing weight by starving themselves for days. And, as if these findings were not troublesome enough, Hispanic teens were more likely to miss hours because of safety concerns when compared with their black or white peers.

The survey also included questions about television watching and computer time for other activities beside school as well as using sunscreen and drinking milk. Watching TV was an activity black students were very involved in, with 63 percent of them watching three or more hours a day. Only 43 percent of Hispanic students and 27 percent of whites watched too much TV. Kids and teens are recommended no more than two hours daily.

Also, the survey found that more black students than Hispanics and whites use computers for non-school activities like videogames.