Date: August 16, 2011
Since the early 1990’s, the District of Columbia Public School (DCPS) system was funded by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) to collect Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data every other year from a representative sample of public high school students. The YRBS survey has been administered bi-annually in District of Columbia (DC) public high schools (grades 9-12) since 1993.
Beginning in 1997, the YRBS was administered to both middle (grades 6-8) and senior high school students attending the DC public schools. For the first time in 2007, the YRBS was expanded to include both public and public charter school students in grades 6-12 in the District of Columbia.
With the passage of the DC’s Public Education Reform Act of 2007, and as the state education agency, responsibilities for collection and reporting of YRBS data were transferred to the District of Columbia Office of State Superintendent of Education (OSSE). OSSE now receives funding from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH) to provide HIV prevention education and conduct the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) in the District of Columbia. Beginning in 2009, oversight for administration of the YRBS survey under this CDC-funded cooperative agreement was undertaken by the OSSE Office of Wellness and Nutrition Services (WNS). Future collection of these data in the DC schools will continue to be administered by OSSE staff in collaboration with representatives from the public and public charter schools.
The 2007 YRBS report represents, for the first time, a summary of data collected from public and public charter middle and senior high schools, and is designed to provide a new template for subsequent bi-annual summary reports of District of Columbia YRBS data for the OSSE, Office of Wellness and Nutrition Services (WNS). This report will be supplemented by a series of risk behavior fact sheets highlighting key findings.
Data are presented in this report for standardized variables collected on the national YRBS, as well as new or unique variables specifically created for the District of Columbia to better address priority behaviors (e.g., HIV, obesity, substance use, violence, asthma) selected as benchmarks by the District’s Interagency Collaboration and Service Integration Commission (ICSIC)1, and published in the DC Government, Child Health Action Plan of 2008 (DC-DOH, 2008).
Related Content: DC Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS)
