§ Mrs. WiseTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what research his Department has commissioned into the living standards and health of pregnant girls under 18 years of age and into the outcomes of such pregnancies.
§ Mrs. Virginia BottomleyThe Department commissioned a wider study from the Institute for Social Studies in Medical Care. The findings were published by HMSO in 1986 in "Teenage Mothers and their Partners", a copy of which is available in the Library, and in a series of articles in professional journals.
The Department has provided core funding to the national perinatal epidemiology unit since 1978. The unit continuously monitors and analyses data which are routinely collected by the Government Statistical Service and the national health service, to assess how the outcome of pregnancy and social, economic and medical factors thought to he associated with it vary both over time and from place to place within England and Wales. Analysis of the outcome of pregnancies in girls under 18 years of age is encompassed within this work.