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Nation’s High School Students Showing Overall Improvements in Health-Related Behaviors

However, Hispanic Students Not Showing Progress in Some Key Areas

Image of Healthy AdolescentsCDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) has released a report that finds that today’s high school students are less likely to engage in many health risk behaviors than high school students in the early 1990s. Although the study documents substantial improvements over time in many health risk behaviors among all high school students, Hispanic students remain at greater risk for certain health-related behaviors and have not matched the progress made over time by black students and white students in reducing some sexual risk behaviors. Read the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) Press Release [pdf 79K] for more information.

“We are pleased that more high school students today are doing things that will help them stay healthy and avoiding things that put their health in danger,” said Howell Wechsler, Ed.D., MPH, director of CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health. “Unfortunately, we are not seeing that same progress among Hispanic teens for certain risk factors.”

Listen to CDC's A Minute of Health podcast featuring YRBS results.

An interview with Dr. Wechsler is also available on CDC's A Cup of Health podcast.

Read more from Dr. Wechsler on his WebMD blog: Nation's Teens: Some Still Riskier Than Others.*
 

To access the report (one of CDC's MMWR Surveillance Summaries), new fact sheets on the YRBS, national YRBS data files, and technical documentation, visit YRBSS: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System.

 

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Page last reviewed: June 6, 2008
Page last modified: June 24, 2008
Content source: National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Adolescent and School Health

Division of Adolescent and School Health
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Department of Health and Human Services