Family planning services for adolescents and young adults

If we are to influence the numerical trends of venereal disease and of unwanted pregnancies in the young, family planning services should be made easily available to them. To encourage the widest possible and most effective use of such services requires that health professionals openly endorse their ready availability. They must foster non-judgmental attitudes, however unorthodox patient life styles may be, and provide the young with opportunities to explore their own sexual behavior. The Youth Clinics of the Department of Community Health Services in Los Angeles are designed to meet both the immediate therapeutic and preventive health needs of our patients. Contraceptive services, abortion counseling and referrals as well as individual, group and community education are the primary pillars of our program. There is an enormous task for all of us who are concerned with adolescents to press for sex education programs, in or out of the school system, that will include adults as well as our children.