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Implementing Community-Driven Evidence-Based Programs
OPA is investing in and scaling community-driven teen pregnancy prevention evidence-based programs (EBPs) and services.
Overview
Adolescence is a developmental stage rich with opportunities to think more critically and engage more deeply with the world than in childhood. During this time, it’s imperative for youth to learn how to make healthy decisions and form healthy relationships. The Office of Population Affairs’ (OPA) Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program is a national, evidence-based program that funds diverse organizations working to give adolescents, and the adults supporting them, the tools and knowledge to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes and promote positive experiences, relationships, and environments to help our nation’s youth thrive.
With an annual budget of approximately $101 million, OPA invests in the replication of evidence-based TPP programs while developing and evaluating new and innovative approaches to prevent unintentional teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among adolescents, promoting positive youth development, and advancing equity in adolescent health. A major component of the TPP program funds organizations that serve communities and populations with the greatest needs and facing significant disparities.
Implement Effective Programs to Scale
OPA’s TPP program invests in community-driven strategies by identifying programs that work and supporting their implementation. The grants support communities throughout the nation in scaling these evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs and services. Grant recipients support meaningful engagement of youth, parents/caregivers, and the community in the design, implementation, and monitoring of the project. They also support active collaboration with a network of partners to increase awareness of and access to adolescent-friendly health services. These TPP grant recipients explore the needs of their communities to recognize and understand what inequities exist and the underlying causes contributing to them. With this knowledge, they provide youth-centered, community-driven, high-quality programming and services.
Evaluate the Impact of New and Innovative Approaches
In addition to evidence-based programs, the TPP program also funds research and demonstration grants that foster innovation through the development, testing, and evaluation of new or improved interventions, approaches, programs, and strategies to improve adolescent sexual health outcomes. These projects advance groundbreaking research and create innovative practices that engage underserved populations or apply to settings currently underrepresented among evidence-based approaches. This ensures OPA will continually advance more equitable, innovative, and responsive programming for the nation’s youth.
Current TPP Grant Recipient Snapshot
Beginning in 2023, 71 organizations received funding through the TPP program that will continue for up to five years:
- 53 organizations are implementing effective TPP programs to scale—those proven through rigorous evaluation to reduce teen pregnancy, behavioral risk factors underlying teen pregnancy, or other associated risk behaviors—in communities with the greatest need.
- 12 organizations are evaluating the impact of new and innovative approaches to prevent teen pregnancy and STIs and promote health.
- 6 organizations are developing collaborative pipelines to incubate and accelerate innovative strategies to prevent teen pregnancy and promote healthy adolescence, especially among youth who are at a higher risk for teen pregnancy.
Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program Continuum
Through the TPP program, OPA invests in an innovation-to-scale continuum, where organizations funded under various initiatives are creating, identifying, and expanding the reach of effective approaches in communities across the country.
- Incubate: Create innovative approaches to advance greater health equity
- Accelerate: Test, refine, and package innovative approaches in preparation for impact evaluation and/or scaling
- Evaluate for impact: Conduct rigorous impact evaluations to identify evidence of effectiveness and share findings
- Implement to scale: Deliver evidence-based innovative approaches to scale and provide supportive services to youth
OPA funds TPP programs with new or improved approaches that are responsive to the needs of youth, their families, and communities, in order to advance equity and address the disparities we see in unintended teen pregnancy and STIs among adolescents. These approaches are then rigorously tested, refined, and evaluated for impact. Once a program has evidence that it is effective in reducing unintentional teen pregnancy, STIs, and associated sexual risk behaviors, the program is added to the TPP Evidence Review list of available programs and is eligible to be implemented by TPP grant recipients.
OPA collects data from its grant recipients about the number of youth served and their characteristics, program dosage, implementation quality, and grant recipients’ progress in forming partnerships and disseminating information.
- Since 2010, TPP grant recipients have served 1.57 million youth across 41 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the Marshall Islands. Annually, the TPP program serves nearly 200,000 young people.
- The program has also trained more than 23,500 professionals, established over 20,000 community partnerships, and developed 56 innovative programs and products.
Explore OPA's TPP Performance Measures Snapshots from recent years.
Learn more about the TPP program, including successful strategies, performance measures, and current grant recipients.