Denver Public Schools and the Boulder Valley School District are looking into the possibility of passing out condoms at school health clinics. In both school systems, some students have spoken out in favor of schools distributing prophylactics.

A 2003 George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services study found that teens at high schools where condoms are distributed were no more likely to have sex than other teens. The study found students in high schools with condom programs were more likely to use condoms, and teens in schools without condom programs were more likely to use other forms of birth control. The study found no differences in pregnancy rates at schools with or without condoms.

Six percent of visits to the Denver district's 12 middle and high school health clinics are for reproductive health services, including pregnancy and STD tests and help finding contraception, according to Paul Melinkovich, director of the school-based health centers run in partnership with Denver Health Medical Center.

A 2003 survey of 757 Colorado high school students found that 39.1 percent of ninth-12th graders reported having had intercourse. Nearly 5 percent of students had been pregnant or gotten someone else pregnant, according to the 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains reports that approximately 12,000 teens become pregnant each year in Colorado and nearly one-fourth of those pregnancies end in abortion.

Young people ages 15-23 are at the greatest risk for many STDs, including chlamydia and gonorrhea, which are on the rise nationwide, according to Planned Parenthood. Half of all new HIV infections in the U.S. are in people 25 and under.

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