Condom Giveaway Found to Be Effective
A free condom program at a Los Angeles County high school has increased sexual safety without any corresponding increase in sexual activity, according to a new study reported today by researchers at Santa Monica’s Rand Corp.
The percentage of sexually experienced males using a condom each time they had intercourse rose by a third, from 37% to 50%, at the unidentified high school, according to a report in the journal Family Planning Perspectives.
But rebutting the fears of condom distribution critics, the study found that the number of males and females who had ever had sex remained constant at 55% and 46%, respectively.
“This is just one study in one school district . . . but it is very encouraging,” said Dr. Mark A. Schuster, a senior researcher at Rand and a pediatrician at UCLA. A study in New York recently obtained similar results, he said, adding: “It looks like these programs really can have the desired effect.”
Response to the study was tepid at best, however. Condom distribution “ceased to be controversial a couple of months after we started doing it,” said Shel Erlich, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Unified School District. A condom distribution program began in 1992 in high schools in the Los Angeles, Culver City and Santa Monica-Malibu school districts.
Although neither the campus where the research was done nor its district were identified, the study was conducted in a 2,500-student high school “that serves a racially and socioeconomically diverse community in Los Angeles County,” the report stated.
In the program, plastic packets containing two condoms were placed in baskets in four classrooms and outside the school nurse’s office. Students did not need permission to take them, and no counseling was required. A sign requested a quarter for each packet, but few students left any money. Between 1,800 and 2,000 packets were taken each month.
Schuster and his colleagues conducted an anonymous survey of students about their sexual practices before the distribution began and one year after it started. Parental consent was required for the students to fill out the survey forms, and more than 40% did not complete the second form because of lack of such consent.
The study found almost no increase in condom use among sexually experienced female students and a one-third increase among experienced males. But the results were more encouraging among the sexually naive.
The percentage of males who reported using a condom at first intercourse grew from 46% to 56%, while for those who had only recently initiated intercourse, the number rose from 65% to 80%. And among those who reported that they planned to use condoms when they had sex for the first time, the number rose from 62% to 90% among males and from 73% to 94% among females.
“There was a very large percentage of the students who had gotten condoms, opened them up and put them on their fingers,” Schuster said. “If they engage in sex in the future, they are more likely to use them, and more likely to use them right, because they are more familiar with them.”
