Introduction
Press Release
Facts at a Glance
Everyday in Oklahoma Partners
Kids Count Leadership
About OICA
Overview and Findings
Circumstances/Behaviors
Economic Clusters
State Benchmarks
County Benchmarks
Download Factbook

Copyright 2004

Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy
420 N.W. 13th Street
Suite 101
Oklahoma City 73103
Phone: 405-236-5437
Fax: 405-236-5439
www.oica.org

More online information about children at-risk

Circumstances and Behaviors

Youth and Young Adults Building Oklahoma’s Future

Circumstances Which Make Oklahoma Youth Vulnerable to Negative Consequences

Behaviors Which Make Oklahoma Youth Vulnerable to Negative Consequences

What Works — Linking Positive Youth Development with Risk Reduction

This section of the report–complete with charts and graphics–is available for download in pdf format

 

A State Profile:
Youth and Young Adults Building Oklahoma’s Future

More than a third of all Oklahomans (35.8%, or 1,250,816) are younger than twenty-five years of age. Almost half of those (529,773) are over the age of 14, perched on the very edge of adulthood. Growing up is difficult in the best of circumstances. Some will mature with grace, making us proud. Others, facing this transition unprepared and unsupported through no fault of their own, will simply terrify us.

The successes and failures of today’s young people will determine their futures and ours. Today’s youth will become tomorrow’s teachers and doctors. They will set policy at Oklahoma’s ballot boxes. They will run state agencies and be responsible for Oklahoma’s security. From their ranks will come school board and city council members, state and federal legislators, Oklahoma’s governor, and maybe even the President of the United States. They will also become tomorrow’s unemployed. Those in poor health will fill our hospitals and die before their time. Some will skirt the law. Many will be in prison. One will be the police officer that arrives in your neighborhood to keep another one from robbing or raping.

Why do some young people succeed and others do not? There are no easy answers. In 2004, the KIDS COUNT Factbook takes this initial look at how teens and young adults are faring in Oklahoma, highlighting some promising approaches to complex situations.

Living with dismal circumstances becomes a risk factor for many young Oklahomans, making them more vulnerable and less likely to become self-supporting adults. Currently, more than one hundred thousand (101,759, ages 15 through 24) young Oklahomans live in poverty. Almost twenty thousand Oklahoma youth (19,758, ages 16 through 19) are disconnected, neither working nor in school. More than five thousand older teen females are already mothers (5,150, ages 18 and 19). Almost seven hundred (660, ages 15 through 17) teens live in foster care each month. Each year, more than thirty-five hundred (3,592, ages 15 through 17) arrests of teens for drug or alcohol crimes are made in Oklahoma. One hundred sixty five teens (ages 15 through 19) die accidental or violent deaths each year. These Oklahoma youth find themselves in circumstances where they face increased odds against making a successful transition to a productive, healthy adulthood. Some succeed in spite of risks they face, others don’t. Some have already lost.

Back to top menu


The Concept of Vulnerability
Most Oklahomans understand that some specific circumstances or behaviors can affect an individual’s health or well-being. The concept of “risk factors” is one used frequently by public health officials. For example, it is commonly understood that bad diets put people at risk for heart problems, that a family history of cancer puts people at increased risk of being diagnosed with cancer themselves, and that not wearing seat belts invites the risk of death or disability from an automobile accident. A similar concept applies to Oklahoma teens and young adults. It is well documented that risks associated with specific circumstances or behaviors can affect a young person’s health or well-being, making them more or less vulnerable to a myriad of positive and negative consequences.


Circumstances Which Make Oklahoma Youth Vulnerable to Negative Consequences

Living with dismal circumstances becomes a risk factor for many young Oklahomans, making them more vulnerable and less likely to become self-supporting adults. Currently, more than one hundred thousand (101,759, ages 15 through 24) young Oklahomans live in poverty. Almost twenty thousand Oklahoma youth (19,758, ages 16 through 19) are disconnected, neither working nor in school. More than five thousand older teen females are already mothers (5,150, ages 18 and 19). Almost seven hundred (660, ages 15 through 17) teens live in foster care each month. Each year, more than thirty-five hundred (3,592, ages 15 through 17) arrests of teens for drug or alcohol crimes are made in Oklahoma. One hundred sixty five teens (ages 15 through 19) die accidental or violent deaths each year. These Oklahoma youth find themselves in circumstances where they face increased odds against making a successful transition to a productive, healthy adulthood. Some succeed in spite of risks they face, others don’t. Some have already lost.

Teens and Young Adults Living in Poverty
Poverty can sabotage a young person’s effort to become a healthy, productive adult. For a teen or young adult, being poor means living in a household unable to purchase enough food for an adequate diet. It means being more likely than their peers to stay too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. Poor youth are less likely to receive medical care when they are sick and are more likely to drop out of school. Poverty can be fatal.

For young people, adequate resources are vital to becoming healthy adults, to starting higher education, to beginning careers, and to enabling independence. In spite of progress made throughout the 1990’s, it is as though Oklahoma has accepted defeat in the war against poverty for youth about to become adults. For the first time in history, these young people will fare worse than their parents. One of every five (101,759, or 21.4%) teens and young adults (ages 15 through 24) in Oklahoma lives in poverty. More than fifty thousand (50,835), or half of those young people, live in extreme poverty in households where the income fails to reach even half of the poverty line.

High rates of child poverty among Oklahoma’s youngest are well documented. The highest rates of poverty for those under age 18 are found among those age 4 and under. Poverty rates typically decline over childhood. Then youth are abruptly thrown back into poverty as they enter adulthood where rates for those just over age 18 skyrocket to almost twenty-four percent (23.9%). Half (50.6%) of these youth ages 18 through 24 who are poor live in extreme poverty.

The highest and worst rate of poverty for young people over the age of 14 and under the age of 25 is found in Payne County where almost half (45.2%) live in poverty. Payne County’s high youth poverty rate results in part from relatively low-income university students making up a large portion of its youth population. Wagoner County has the lowest and best poverty rate (10.4%) among their teens and young adults.

Disconnected Youth
(Not Working and Not in School)
Getting a good start as a young adult is vital to lifelong success. Those who spend their young adult years unemployed and out of school have a hard time finding and getting a job later in life. Education is critical to maintaining employment. Almost one in ten (9.3%) Oklahoma youth from the ages of 16 through 19 are not engaged in either school or work. These nearly twenty thousand (19,758) idle youth undergo a difficult transition into adulthood and fail to get the good start vital to becoming self-supporting.

The rate of young Oklahomans who are not connected to either work or school is higher for all non-White races, except Asian, than for Whites. In every racial group, young women are more often idle than young men. Disability contributes to young people being disconnected. One in eight (13.1%) idle youth over age 17 and under age 25 is disabled.

The proportion of idle teens ranges from the highest and worst rate of almost seventeen percent (16.9%) in Okfuskee County to the lowest and best rate of two percent (2.0%) in Grant County.

Births to Older Teens
Consequences of sexual activity among teens too often include unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Each year about seventy-six hundred (7,606 average annual, 2000 - 2002) babies are born to Oklahoma females under the age of 20. Compared to women who delay childbearing until at least age 20, their risks are greater.

Births to older teens (ages 18 and 19) comprise over two-thirds (67.7%) of all teen births in Oklahoma each year. Oklahoma birth rates for older teens (96.9 per 1,000 females ages 18 and 19, 2002) far exceed national rates (72.8 per 1,000 females ages 18 and 19, 2002).

These young women, considered by many to already be adults, are often overlooked by health and education initiatives. However, having a child, even late in the teen years, complicates the process of becoming an adult. Many older teen mothers are still in school when they become pregnant and are less likely than their peers to graduate. During the most recent three year period (2000 - 2002), almost half (44.6%) of 18 and 19 year old mothers had not completed high school. With her education interrupted, the new mother is less likely to ever finish school and more likely to live in poverty. The children of 18 and 19 year old mothers are often born too small or too early. Low birthweight is more common among 18 and 19 year old mothers (8.7% annual average, 2000 - 2002) than among mothers age 20 or older (7.5% annual average, 2000 -2002).

Subsequent births to Oklahoma teens who are already mothers are disturbingly common. Almost one in every four (22.5%) births to an older Oklahoma teen is a repeat pregnancy, with the first child likely born before the mother even turned 18. Young mothers who have a difficult first pregnancy or whose babies are born with problems have a three-fold risk of repeating that poor outcome in their second pregnancy. With more than one child, the teen mother has little chance of returning to school or attaining economic self-sufficiency.

The babies’ risks increase also. Children of teen mothers, more often than children of older women, have mental retardation, live in poverty, and grow up without a father. They will more likely perform poorly in school, receive insufficient health care and inadequate parenting, or be abused or neglected. They are more likely to become teen parents themselves. If a teen mother gives birth again as a teenager, all of her children are more likely to have behavioral problems and less likely to be prepared for school themselves.

Currently, the highest and worst rate of older teen births in Oklahoma is found in Greer County where almost two hundred out of every thousand (199.0 per 1,000) young women ages 18 and 19 have babies each year. Young women ages 18 and 19 in Payne County have the lowest and best birth rate (27.9 per 1,000) for their age group.

Teens Living in Foster Care
Teens need permanency, stability and a family with whom to stay connected. Poor outcomes for young people whose family lives have been disrupted are well documented. Foster care youth are less healthy than other poor children. Most studies show that former foster care children do more poorly in school than other students. The multiple school changes often associated with foster care placements result in lower math and reading skills. Fewer graduate. Challenges of foster care are intensified for older youth who contend with high rates of drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy and teen parenting. Consequences are life altering and long term. Compared to other youth in the community, a higher proportion of foster care graduates end up in the criminal justice system, homeless, unemployed or dependent on public assistance.

Foster care children are a particularly vulnerable population. Most children and youth in foster care have been victims of poor parenting and substantial abuse or neglect. Some have been abandoned or orphaned. Children and youth are placed in state custody as a way to protect them after it has been determined that their parents are unable or unwilling to provide them care. They arrive in state care with emotional, behavioral, developmental and health troubles that reflect their difficult circumstances. Many foster care children are further traumatized by the separation from their parents. They struggle with difficult adjustments to new caregivers, often facing multiple placements. Some youth stay in foster care for a short time, then are reunified with their families. Others remain in care for months or years. Some grow into adults in state care, literally “aging out” of the system.

Once in state custody, foster care children might be placed in regular foster care homes with adults not known to the child. Some state custody children are placed with relatives, or other adults they already know, such as the parents of a close friend, teachers or health care providers. Those “kinship” placements, whether with relatives or other adults, may be paid or unpaid. Some children are returned to their own homes under state supervision. Oklahoma maintains some therapeutic foster care homes as short term placements for children exhibiting severe behavior problems and some psychiatric placements for youth experiencing severe mental problems. Older foster care youth are substantially less likely than other foster children to be placed with a family. Congregate living facilities, such as group homes, are frequently used for older youth in Oklahoma.

Currently, Oklahoma’s foster care system serves more than six thousand children and youth (6,258 annual average, FY2001-2003) each month. One in eight (749, or 12.0%) of Oklahoma’s foster care children are age 15 or older. Of these older youth, six hundred sixty (660) are ages 15 through 17 and eighty-nine are age 18 or older, having voluntarily remained in state custody in their foster homes to complete high school classes or finish their GED. Each year, the number of older youth in Oklahoma foster care steadily increases.

With girls making up almost sixty percent (58.1%) of the youth age 15 and older in the custody of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, older youth in foster care are disproportionately female. The foster care population is racially diverse and disproportionately non-White. One in five (19.9%) Oklahoma teens age 15 and older in foster care is African American and one in ten (9.2%) is American Indian.

Foster families receive monthly payments to help defray some of the costs of having an extra child in their home. Regardless, national studies have documented that almost a third of the foster care population lives in poverty while in foster care. Reimbursement rates fail to fully compensate for the costs associated with the around-the-clock care provided by a foster family. Currently, the highest and worst foster care rate is in Coal County where during an average month youth ages 15 through 17 live in foster care at a rate of almost three thousand (2,857.1) per 100,000 teens. The lowest and best rate (0.0 per 100,000) is found in nine Oklahoma counties (Cimarron, Ellis, Grant, Harmon, Harper, Jefferson, Major, Roger Mills and Woodward).

Arrests of Teens for Drug
and Alcohol Related Offenses

There is a tendency to consider some use of alcohol as a normal teenage right of passage. Since moderate drinking is typically viewed as acceptable among adults, experimenting with alcohol in adolescence may be inappropriately accepted. For many young people, use of alcohol, or even drugs, does not become a regular behavior or a permanent problem. Even so, because their bodies are going through an important developmental period, the consequences of alcohol and drug use can be much more negative for youth than for adults.

Use of drugs or alcohol can interfere with a young person’s ability to learn by causing memory problems, learning problems, reasoning difficulties and impairing brain functioning. Judgment and social functioning diminish substantially. Coordination and motor functioning become impaired. Because of the skills which are adversely affected by drug and alcohol use, safely operating an automobile becomes impossible. Intoxication is commonly involved with traffic fatalities, violence and serious criminal behavior. Extensive alcohol and drug use increases the risk a young person will develop serious medical complications.

Alcohol use is too common among Oklahoma teens. Each year almost two thousand arrests are made charging youth ages 15 through 17 with driving under the influence of alcohol, drunkenness or violating liquor laws. After alcohol, marijuana remains the drug of choice for Oklahoma teens ages 15 through 17 and was involved in four out of five (82.6%) of their arrests for drug possession and half (53.2%) of their arrests for drug manufacturing or sales. Drug and alcohol arrests among youth ages 15 through 17 are four times more likely to be males than females.

Currently, the highest and worst arrest rate is in Okfuskee County where during an average year youth ages 15 through 17 are arrested for drug- and alcohol-related offenses at a rate of almost seven thousand (6,812.7) per 100,000 teens. The lowest and best rate (0.0 per 100,000) is found in three Oklahoma counties (Cimarron, Ellis and Major).

Violent and Accidental Teen Death
Violence among teens typically involves carrying weapons, physical fighting and involvement in gang activity. Consequences can be serious — altering lives or ending them.

It is common for youth, especially males, who have been exposed to violence in their homes and personal lives to carry weapons and act violently themselves. Smoking cigarettes and using drugs or alcohol strongly predict that a young person will act violently. Depression frequently predicts violence by a young person, turned inward toward one’s self or outward towards others. Gang members and youth who associate with peers who are involved in delinquent behaviors have high rates of participation in violent crimes. Youth can, and often do, face legal consequences for their violent behaviors.

As children age, the severity of violent behavior escalates. A violent elementary school child may bully his classmates. A violent high school student might commit assault, hurting or killing another, or attempt suicide, hurting or killing himself.

Anti-social behavior often accompanies violent behavior, causing young people to be rejected by their peers and their teachers. As youth fail to regulate their emotions, they do poorly in school, skip classes and receive suspensions. School failures and school dropout rates increase as violence increases. If violent youth survive to adulthood, their difficulties continue. As adults they will frequently confront severe depression, termination of employment, dishonorable discharge from the military, alcohol and drug dependency, incarceration and high mortality rates.

Motor vehicle crashes are the most common cause of accidental teen death. Serious injuries and fatalities are increased when young drivers and passengers fail to wear seatbelts. Recreation can hold dangers for young people. Death or serious disabilities can be caused by sports-related injuries, boating and swimming accidents, hunting injuries or bicycle accidents. Injuries, and deaths resulting from injuries, are more common among young males than among young females.

Today, accidents and injuries are the leading cause of death among adolescents and young adults. During the most recent three-year period an average of two hundred three youth from the ages of 15 through 19 died each year. Four of every five Oklahoma teen deaths (165, or 81.8%) were the result of accidents or violence.
Just under half of all deaths (44.2%) of Oklahoma African Americans ages 15 through 19 are violent, making violence the leading cause of death for young African Americans. Accidents are the leading cause of death for Whites (61.8%) and American Indians (61.0%) of the same ages in Oklahoma.

During the last two years (2001 and 2002) in Oklahoma, an average of twenty-six young people each year stood on the brink of adulthood and committed suicide instead. Over forty percent (42.3%) of the violent deaths of youth ages 15 through 19 in Oklahoma during this period resulted from suicide. Most suicide victims were White male youth.

Currently, the highest and worst death rate is in Greer County where during an average year youth ages 15 through 19 die accidental or violent deaths at a rate of over three hundred (330.7) per 100,000 teens. The lowest and best rate (0.0 per 100,000) is found in eleven Oklahoma counties (Beaver, Coal, Dewey, Harper, Jefferson, Marshall, Noble, Okfuskee, Roger Mills, Tillman and Woodward).

The section of the report–complete with charts and graphs–is available for download in pdf format.

Back to top menu

Behaviors Which Make Oklahoma Youth Vulnerable to Negative Consequences

Taking risks is a part of growing up. Children cannot make new friends without chancing rejection. Teens cannot explore their own intellect without risking embarrassment in class. Young athletes cannot develop without pushing themselves physically. It is not unusual for young people, exploring the edge of adulthood, to be extreme. Unless youth behavior risks death, disability or other long term negative consequences, adults applaud the courage of their young. Oklahoma kids are good, even though some of the risks they take are dangerous.

The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) monitors health risk behaviors that contribute to death, disability and social problems among young people. In 2003, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) and local public high schools collaborated to complete the first statewide survey which can be compared to national data. Administered in randomly selected classrooms in randomly selected schools, YRBS provides data representative of all state and national public high school students during the spring of 2003.

Behaviors Contributing
to Injuries and Violence

Results from Oklahoma’s YRBS demonstrate that numerous high school students engage in behaviors that increase their likelihood of violent or accidental death. One in ten (11.1%) rarely or never wears a seat belt when someone else is driving. During the 30 days preceding the survey, almost a third (30.6%) had ridden with a driver who had been drinking alcohol and nearly a fifth (17.1%) drove themselves after drinking. More than twenty percent (21.8%) of Oklahoma’s high school students had carried a weapon during the 30 days preceding the survey and more than twenty-eight percent (28.4%) had been in a physical fight during the year before the survey. Seven percent (7.0%) had attempted suicide in the prior year.

Compared to high school students nationally, Oklahoma students are more likely to wear seat belts when someone else is driving. While all high school students ride with drivers who had been drinking at about the same rate, Oklahoma students were more likely to drive themselves after drinking. While a smaller percent are involved in physical altercations, a greater proportion of Oklahoma high school students carry a gun, knife or a club as a weapon than is common in other places. Rates of forced sexual intercourse and dating violence are about the same in Oklahoma as in the nation. Results from YRBS indicate that suicide is attempted less frequently in Oklahoma, although mortality data documents that rates of completed suicide for young people in Oklahoma are among the highest in the nation.

Behaviors Contributing to Addiction,
Dependency and Substance Abuse

Tobacco addiction typically begins in childhood. More than three quarters (76%) of adult smokers in Oklahoma acquired the habit before they turned 18. Tobacco use in Oklahoma remains the leading cause of preventable death, killing more than six thousand Oklahomans every year. Today’s young Oklahomans will become part of that grim statistic when one in every three teen tobacco users will die prematurely from their tobacco use.

The 2002 Oklahoma Youth Tobacco Survey documents recent improvement, reporting that tobacco use dropped for Oklahoma high school students between 1999 and 2002. Unfortunately, rates of current tobacco use remain painfully high. YRBS 2003 documented that cigarettes had been tried by two thirds (64.1%) of Oklahoma’s high school students and more than one in four (26.5%) still smokes cigarettes.

Even with a legal drinking age of twenty-one in Oklahoma, alcohol use is common among children and youth. Four of every five (78.6%) high school students admit to already having tried alcohol at some time in the past. Almost half (47.8%) of all Oklahoma youth in high school currently drink alcohol.

Too many Oklahoma youth are entangled in the drug culture. Two in five (42.5%) high school students have tried marijuana and one in five (22.0%) still smokes it. One in ten have tried some form of cocaine (9.2%), inhalant (9.9%) or methamphetamine (9.9%). Some still use. About three percent (3.4%) of Oklahoma high school students acknowledge that they currently use cocaine powder, “crack,” or “freebase”. About the same rate of high school students (3.9%) acknowledge currently sniffing glue, breathing the contents of aerosol spray cans, or inhaling paints or spays to get high.
Oklahomans start young. Before the age of 13, one in four high school students smoked cigarettes (23.7%) or drank alcohol (26.8%). One in ten (11.1%) had tried marijuana. The younger people are when they try marijuana, the more likely they are to become drug-addicted adults.

Compared to high school students nationally, Oklahoma students are more likely to try and more likely to continue smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. Oklahoma youth are slightly more likely to try marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines and slightly less likely to try inhalants. The rate of current drug use among Oklahoma high school students is slightly lower than comparable national rates.

Behaviors Contributing to Unintended
Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Disease

Results from Oklahoma’s YRBS demonstrate that numerous high school students engage in behaviors that increase their likelihood of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. Half (50.0%) of Oklahoma’s high school students report that they have already engaged in sexual intercourse. More than a third (37.2%) are currently sexually active, having had intercourse during the preceding month. About two-thirds (64.3%) of the currently sexually active high school students (or their partner) used condoms during their most recent sexual encounter. Considerably fewer (17.7%) relied on birth control pills. One in four (25.3%) currently sexually active Oklahoma high school students reported having used drugs or alcohol before their most recent sexual encounter.

Among all high school students, eleventh grade girls are the most sexually active, with almost half (47.0%) reporting sexual intercourse during the preceding month. Oklahoma girls are more likely to be currently sexually active than Oklahoma boys from the tenth grade on. Professionals believe this data suggests that the sexual encounters of many high school girls are with older youth no longer in high school or other male adults.

More Oklahoma high school students report being sexually active than do their peers around the nation. While all sexually active high school students use condoms at about the same rate, Oklahoma students are only about half as likely than youth around the nation to use birth control pills. The rate of Oklahoma high school students using alcohol or drugs before engaging in sexual intercourse is significantly lower than comparable national rates.

The section of the report–complete with charts and graphs–is available for download in pdf format.

Back to top menu

What Works — Linking Positive Youth Development with Risk Reduction

Historically, programs attempting to help young people avoid risk-taking behaviors used a “problem” approach — focusing on the risks, trying to increase what young people knew about them and trying to change attitudes. Less attention was paid to what assets or “protective factors” each young person had internally or in their environment that might help buffer them against risk. With sufficient protection, a young person’s resiliency can help them beat the odds. Over the past several years research has accumulated to demonstrate that programs which develop youth assets, combined with those that reduce risk-taking behaviors, hold the promise to help Oklahoma’s youth successfully grow to be productive adults.

Good individual social and problem solving skills are key. Young people do best when they maintain a commitment to their own education and when they stay connected to their family, their school and their community. Here family matters. When the teen’s parents effectively manage family conflict, their children do best. Youth thrive when their parents have clear expectations for them and monitor teen behavior. Youthful transgressions are best met with reasonable, consistent consequences. School and community are vital. Youth do best in places where drugs are scarce and firearms are not readily available. High community and school expectations combine with the active involvement of parents and other adults to support youth.

Oklahoma has led the nation in documenting the relationships between specific youth assets and risk behaviors. Research from the HEART of OKC Project (Healthy, Empowered And Responsible Teens of OKC), a partnership between the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, studied nine youth assets as they related to specific youth behaviors, and identified ways to translate research into practice. (see chart pp. 20-21 in the pdf version.)

Facilitating a young person’s successful transition to adulthood requires multiple and ongoing interventions and consistent, nurturing and positive adult and peer relationships. Youth who have not yet engaged in risky behaviors are to be educated. The attitudes and habits of young people who are already involved in risk-taking behaviors are to be modified. Young people who are currently in trouble are to be helped. Even then, more is required. As noted expert, Karen Pittman, Director of the Forum for Youth Investment, explains, “Problem-free is not fully prepared. We need to define what we want youth to do as forcefully as we articulate what we do not want.” Effective youth development involves prevention, preparation and participation. Successful youth learn the behaviors to avoid and the skills, values and capabilities to develop.

Much is known about what can be done to help Oklahoma teens succeed. Research has documented that programs can encourage healthy and safe lifestyles, can reduce teen pregnancy and risky sexual behavior, can reduce teen substance abuse and violence, and can involve youth in healthy activities and relationships. Relationships are key to adolescent well-being, with quality parent-child relationships topping the list. Parents matter in the lives of their children. Caring, positive adult and peer role models and mentors matter in the lives of all adolescents. Effective programs engage youth in addressing their own problems and creating their own programs. Oklahoma has some good beginnings.

No single factor or set of factors will predict with certainty that a youth will suffer harm or be protected from it. Everyone knows a youth in dire circumstances who, in spite of being exposed to multiple risks, grew up to be a stellar, productive adult; or a teen who had multiple advantages yet lost their way in life. To ensure the majority of young Oklahomans grow up healthy, caring and capable, more adults and communities must become actively engaged in the lives of the youth around them. Caring, engaged adults will determine the path and the promise of Oklahoma’s youth. Their future is Oklahoma’s future.

The section of the report–complete with charts and graphs–is available for download in pdf format.

Back to top menu