ATLANTA – Andre Castro still remembers the days when teen pregnancy seemed an unsolvable problem. Young people were having unprotected sex at increasingly early ages. Pregnancy rates were rising across the country. Community leaders were frozen, debating the wisdom of abstinence-only education versus early childhood sex education.

But those days are long gone, said Castro, the director of Adolescent Health and Youth Development Programs for Gwinnett County’s health department. Since 2005 at Meadowcreek High School, Castro has overseen a health program that exposed all students to both abstinence and sex education, as well as targeted counseling.

“Every student who entered Meadowcreek in ninth grade was touched by the program, and this is our second or third year with no new teen pregnancies,” he said.