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Join OPA to Empower Youth With Sexual and Reproductive Health Information and Services

Published May 2022

May is National Adolescent Health Month (NAHM). During this observance, the Office of Population Affairs (OPA) will emphasize the importance of building on young people’s strengths and potential, encourage and support meaningful youth engagement in adolescent health activities, and highlight key topics in adolescent health.

Empowering youth with sexual and reproductive health information and services is critical for adolescent health. During adolescence, youth grow physically, try new activities, begin to think more critically, and develop more varied and complex relationships. It is essential to give teens the tools they need to make informed decisions about their health.

OPA has resources on reproductive health and healthy relationships, including information on adolescent reproductive health facts, sexually transmitted infections, contraception and preventing pregnancy, and more.

Parents, caregivers, health care professionals and other youth-serving adults can support adolescents by having conversations about healthy relationships, sexual and reproductive health, and teen pregnancy prevention.

OPA’s Title X family planning clinics provide youth with access to high quality, confidential, and youth-friendly reproductive and essential preventive health services. Related preventive health services that are beneficial to reproductive health can include HPV vaccination, provision of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), breast and cervical cancer screening, and screening for obesity, smoking, drug and alcohol use, mental health, and intimate partner violence. Use the Title X clinic locator to find a clinic near you.

  

Title X Clinic Locator image

OPA’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program grantees also work to support adolescent sexual and reproductive health. For example, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, Inc.’s Project SHINE works with youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities to prove equitable access to high-quality information and affordable health care. Another example is Adagio Health in Pennsylvania, which works to enhance connections between both Title X and Teen Pregnancy Prevention programs by increasing referrals to Title X services for youth in its foster care TPP program.