 My name is Destiny, and welcome to our 2012 Teen Pregnancy Report Press Conference. This morning, we will be presenting the latest stand-up for Bayer County. Before we begin, we want to thank the San Antonio Public Library for hosting our event. At this time, please help me welcome Dr. Tomesh Linker, Director of Metro Health, who will begin the official welcome. Thank you, Destiny. Destiny is one of the several fabulous young people that will be meeting today who are working on this very, very important issue for San Antonio. Among those of you who are in the room, too, who are our wonderful supporters and partners in the community, there is no way that we can succeed in this struggle without the active participation of people like yourselves and others. I would also again like to thank the San Antonio Public Library, especially this beautiful central library that is hosting us today. The library in general is a lot more than books, even though I love books myself. It's much more than that, and we're very fortunate in San Antonio that our public library system is so much a part of the community and connects on so many different levels with things that are important to people. On the way out, you might want to wander through the first floor section that has been refurbished in the past few months where they have rows and rows of computers that are open to the public that people can use to look for jobs, sign up for health insurance, play video games, whatever you want to do, they're available and really, as we all know, the wave of the future, but open to everyone. I see that as a huge benefit they're offering. Teen pregnancy and birth to teenagers in San Antonio is getting better, and it has been, the rates have been going down for several years now. In parallel with the state of Texas and in parallel with the rest of the United States, which is great news, but even more rapidly than either Texas or the United States, our rates are coming down in San Antonio, and we're very, very pleased about that. But we still have a long, long way to go. We're still about 40% higher than the U.S. national average, and so what that would mean is that we have 700 or 800 fewer teenage births in San Antonio per year if we would meet the U.S. national average, and I think that needs to be our goal. You'll hear from the other presenters today that we have already surpassed our SA 2020 goal, and that certainly is something to celebrate. However, I think we should aim for nothing less than being no higher than the U.S. national average, and that's going to be a lot of work. It's going to take several years. It's going to take the involvement of many, many people, and metro health, and specifically our wonderful program project worth, led by Mario Martinez, who all of you know in the room, is at a very good place right now in that we are able to do many of the things we've only dreamed about for years. Certain things have changed very much in our favor, very much in favor of the people of San Antonio in this one specific regard, so that we are embarking on some new strategies for which I'd like to describe to you this morning, because they're new, and they're going to help us get over the hump that we have before us. One is that we are going to be able to greatly expand our middle school evidence-based curriculums that we offer to young students that help them avoid pregnancy, at the same time that they learn how to think about themselves and their future and their lives, as well as acquire the skills that they need to negotiate sex, or say no, and that is working very well, but so far it's only been working in the six schools that we've been limited to because of funding. In this year, we will ramp that up to 23 different middle schools in San Antonio, and that is a huge achievement. The second new effort is that you will hear in the presentation that 22% of all births to teenagers are either second, third, or fourth babies that are born, so these are teenage mothers that are having subsequent births, and 22% is a big chunk of the total. We are going to concentrate on those young women, and each year for the next three years we will be enrolling 100 teen moms in an intensive case management program that involves both nurse and social worker, home visiting, and many other aspects in order that they can avoid subsequent unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, not only to help them acquire the skills that they need, but to sort out their view of life and how to make things better for themselves and the child that they already have. And we are starting that, and we'll be able to announce the agency that will be working with us on this. I forgot to mention that we are able to go to 23 new middle schools with our curriculums through the wonderful work of Healthy Futures, Dr. Rialini and others who's here today, who is spearheading that effort. The third program is to enable local physicians and their practices in the community who want to make their practices more teen accessible and teen effective to do that. As a doctor myself, as a pediatrician, I know that one thing that none of us do really well is medical care for teenagers. The biggest problem is they don't come in to see us very often, but even when they do, a lot of times we don't have the skills to communicate and serve them the way they need to be. So this is kind of like a skill building and support effort that we are providing free of charge to local physicians and clinics who want to get better at the crucial practice of adolescent health care. And we're doing this in partnership with UT Teen Health, which is a wonderful effort led by Dr. Kristin Plastino of our local medical center and medical school. And we have high hopes for that. And the fourth is complimentary to education that is key to this effort. It's also very obvious that sexually active teens need access to safe and effective contraception. And that is not always the case. In fact, probably the most safe and effective kind of contraception for teenagers is called long acting reversible contraception, which are either IUDs or other, but more commonly hormonal implants that are these little matchstick size devices that are placed interdermally in the arm. And they're a wonderful contraception because they last for three years and you don't have to think about anything. You don't have to remember to take birth control pills. You don't have to remember to use a condom. So for young people who, you know, they are in a transition phase by their very nature that they're growing up. So they do not have established and predictable sexual patterns. So it is really the best contraception for them. And the one that is indicated and recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and other leading authorities, it is not in common use yet. And the reason is because it's very expensive. These tiny little things that don't look like much are actually very expensive to purchase and to deploy. So through funding of metro health, we will pay for long acting reversal contraception called LARP in any setting, physicians office, hospital, teen clinic, where they provide this to teenage girls up to 19 years old. And that we hope is going to be a game changer here. And we're so fortunate to have that opportunity. So those are just four of the new things that are happening that is building on all the progress we made in recent years. And I would just say again that we shouldn't stop this effort until we get to the point where we're going to be able to do that. So we are no higher than the U.S. national average. So thank you very much for coming. Thank you, Dr. Schlinger. Please help me welcome our next speaker, Darrell Byrd, SA 2020 President and CEO. Thank you, Destiny. You're doing a great job. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Happy to be here with you all where we get the opportunity to celebrate the good news story in San Antonio that we're making great progress towards reducing teen pregnancies and births to teens. But also to look ahead and make sure that we all remember that we've got a long road to go to get to where we ultimately want to go. Whenever I get the opportunity to be in your company, I always take the privilege and talk about context. And we've been talking about context together as a community since the year 2010 in a number of different areas. You all remember because many of you were in the room in September of 2010 when thousands of San Antonians, your neighbors, your friends, your colleagues, family members all decided as a community really in an unprecedented way across the nation that we were going to be in control of our own destiny as a city. And we were going to set a timeframe for ten years to do some extraordinary things. And of all the things that San Antonians had before them to think about challenges, issues, opportunities, all of the things that we could have set as priorities, among one of the things that rose to the top was teen pregnancy. That was something that we as San Antonians by the thousands recognized was going to be the key to our future as a community. Reducing teen pregnancy, creating a lifetime of opportunity in young people, men and women was going to actually contribute to the fuel, the high-test rocket fuel that was going to propel and drive San Antonio forward. So San Antonio should applaud itself for getting its priorities straight and thinking about doing the work necessary to get us to where we need to go by the end of the decade. So I applaud the partnership, the health department, the project work under the health department, the Youth Futures organization, all the other partners who have done some really extraordinary work in collaboration and partnership using the collective impact model, something that is growing across the nation. I can tell you that when you look at the growth from 2007, or they're not growth but the actual reduction in teen pregnancy from 2007 to 2011, when you look at what's happened year over year since that time, we made very steady and measurable process in creating more opportunity for young people moving ahead. That is a model that San Antonio is becoming a poster child for. The collaborative right here in Barrett County is actually becoming a standard bearer for that. It's something again San Antonio should be proud of. I'm also very excited that it's not just a bunch of long in the tooth folks talking about the future of San Antonio. These are the folks who are, again, the fuel that are going to drive that engine forward. They've taken ownership of their future, these young people, and hundreds more like them across San Antonio. So I'm very excited to have you all here leading. I want to applaud you. But remember at the end of the day, we said we were going to reduce teen pregnancy and births of teen mothers by a significant margin. Yes, we did hit our SA-2020 goals very early and that's a good thing and San Antonio's do big things and sometimes we do them fast. So we hit those goals. But as Dr. Schlingker said, we've got much more work to do to ensure that there's a lifetime of opportunity for every single young person in San Antonio because a young at heart will also benefit from it as a result. Thank you all very much. Be proud of yourselves San Antonio. Long road to go, but we've done some great things so far. Thank you.