Communitywide Initiatives

From 2010 to 2015, CDC, the federal Office of Adolescent Health (OAH), and the Office of Population Affairs collaborated to demonstrate the effectiveness of innovative, multicomponent, communitywide initiatives in reducing rates of teen pregnancy and births in communities with the highest rates, with a focus on reaching African American and Latino or Hispanic young people aged 15 to 19 years.

Nine state- and community-based organizations and five national organizations were funded through the 5-year cooperative agreement, Teenage Pregnancy Prevention: Integrating Services, Programs, and Strategies through Communitywide Initiatives.

The five national organizations provided training and technical assistance to the nine implementing state and community-based organizations. The state- and community-based grantees, in turn, provided training and technical assistance to youth-serving organizations and partners to carry out the key components described next. Through this process, many valuable tools and resources for each of the five components were developed, that may be useful to other teen pregnancy prevention initiatives. 

• Component 1: Community Mobilization and Sustainability
  Definition: Engage all sectors of the population in a communitywide effort to address teen pregnancy prevention. Community mobilization supports the sustainability of teen pregnancy prevention efforts by empowering community members and groups to take action to facilitate change. This component includes mobilizing necessary resources, disseminating information, generating support, and fostering cooperation across public and private sectors in the community.
• Component 2: Evidence-Based Programs
  Definition: Provide teens with evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs meeting the HHS evidence review standards. This includes youth-development and curriculum-based programs that reduce teen pregnancy and associated risk factors. Evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) programs are programs that have been shown, in at least one program evaluation, to have a positive effect on preventing teen pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, or sexual risk behaviors. Each evidence-based TPP program was identified by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) TPP Evidence Review, which used a systematic process for reviewing evaluation studies against a rigorous standard.
• Component 3: Increasing Youth Access to Contraceptive and Reproductive Health Care Services
  Definition: Ensure clinical partners provide teen friendly, culturally competent reproductive health care services that are easily accessible to all young people in the community. The partners establish linkages between teen pregnancy prevention program partners and clinics that serve at risk youth from the target community.
• Component 4: Stakeholder Education
  Definition: Educate civic leaders, parents, and other community members about evidence-based strategies to reduce teen pregnancy and improve adolescent reproductive health. This includes needs and available resources in the target community.
• Component 5: Working with Diverse Communities
  Definition: Raise awareness of community partners about the link between teen pregnancy and social determinants of health. Ensure culturally and linguistically appropriate programs and reproductive health care services are available to young people.