title: Educating for the future: adolescent girls' health and education in West Bengal, India.
abstract: Adolescent girls in India carry a disproportionate burden of health and social risks; girls that do not finish secondary education are more likely to have an earlier age of sexual initiation, engage in risky sexual behavior, and consequentially be at greater risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes. This paper presents a comparison of girls in school and girls not in school from 665 participants in rural West Bengal, India. The social cognitive theory (SCT), a comprehensive theoretical model, was used as a framework to describe the personal, behavioral, and environmental factors affecting the lives of these adolescent girls. There were significant differences between girls in and out of school in all three categories of the SCT; girls in school were more likely to have heard of sexually transmitted diseases or infections than girls not in school (p<0.0001). Girls in school were also more likely than girls not in school to boil water before drinking (p=0.0078), and girls in school lived in dwellings with 2.3 rooms on average, whereas girls not in school lived in dwellings with only 1.7 rooms (p<0.0001). Indian adolescent girls who are not in school are disadvantaged both economically and by their lack of health knowledge and proper health behaviors when compared with girls who are still in school. In addition, to programs to keep girls in school, efforts should also be made to provide informal education to girls not in school to improve their health knowledge and behaviors.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Utah, Salt Lake, UT, USA. chrisrees2@gmail.com
authors.forename: Chris A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Rees
authors.forename: Katelyn N
authors.initials: KN
authors.lastname: Long
authors.forename: Bobbi
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gray
authors.forename: Joshua H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: West
authors.forename: Sheila
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chanani
authors.forename: Freya
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Spielberg
authors.forename: Benjamin T
authors.initials: BT
authors.lastname: Crookston
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D016009:Chi-Square Distribution; D003710:Demography; D005260:Female; D006266:Health Education; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012424:Rural Population; D012923:Social Class; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires