The Evaluation of Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Approaches (PPA), funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Adolescent Health, is the first of the current, large-scale federal evaluation efforts aimed at expanding the evidence base of teen pregnancy prevention approaches.  PPA is testing the effectiveness of seven innovative programs in reducing sexual risk behavior and its consequences. The programs selected for PPA offer a range of implementation settings, program strategies, and at-risk target populations, reflecting the diversity of the current program landscape and responsive to important gaps in the evidence base.  This study presents impact findings from an experimental evaluation of the HealthTeacher curriculum¯the first of PPA’s evaluations. HealthTeacher is a comprehensive, on-line health curriculum that offers school districts a practical option for complying with mandated requirements. There is great interest in learning whether such “off-the-shelf” health curricula can be effective at reducing teen risk behavior, and whether they can do so when implemented early, before teens become sexually active.

Our evaluation utilized a matched-pair random assignment design, with the random assignment occurring at the school level. A total of 1,460 students from 17 middle schools participated in the evaluation. All schools were selected from the Chicago Public School system and serve mostly lower-income and predominantly Latino communities with high rates of teen pregnancy and STIs. HealthTeacher was delivered in seventh grade during regular school hours in nine of the study schools during the 2010-2011 academic year. (The other eight schools served as the control group, and provided little, if any, sex education programming.)  Our study of program implementation showed that the nine HealthTeacher schools delivered HealthTeacher with high fidelity to the program model.

Analyses of program impacts are focused on initiation of sexual activity and mediating factors through which the program is expected to impact behavior. Examples of these mediating factors are attitudes toward sexual activity, intentions to engage in sexual activity in the near future, and knowledge related to STI and pregnancy risk. Outcomes are measured in eighth grade— approximately 6 and 12 months after the end of program delivery.  All data collection activities have been completed and analyses of program impacts are currently under way. The draft report summarizing program impacts is scheduled to be completed in June 2013.