Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Roundtable: Findings and Implications from the HHS Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program

(Health Policy)

In 2010, the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS), Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) was established to support the implementation and evaluation of evidence-based programs to address teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) across the country. This was one of six major evidence-based policy initiatives currently funded across the federal government, the largest federal program ever directed at teen pregnancy prevention and the first to focus solely on interventions with evidence behind them. The TPP program has funded $100 million in competitive grants for TPP, and established two types of evaluation efforts for these grants: 1) rigorous replication evaluation of evidence-based TPP programs that are medically accurate, age-appropriate, and have demonstrated previous evidence to prevent teen pregnancy; 2) evaluation of new and innovative TPP programs. OAH has invested heavily in evaluation efforts through federal evaluation studies and rigorous grantee-led evaluation studies supported by evaluation technical assistance. There are 35 grants currently conducting rigorous evaluations of their programs: 17 focus on replicating existing evidence based programs already identified through the HHS TPP Evidence Review; 18 focus on testing new and innovative programs. Additionally, there are 16 evaluations by federal contractors conducting randomized controlled trials, which focus on 9 replications of existing evidence-based programs and 7 new and innovative programs. As the fifth and final year of this cohort of TPP grants concludes in August 2015, OAH is collecting and analyzing final impact evaluation reports from all grantees to determine the overall findings and lessons learned. As one of the largest funders of TPP evaluation efforts, the findings from this cohort of the TPP Program provide the newest and most voluminous evidence available in the TPP field. The findings from this effort provide important lessons for how we utilize evidence-based strategies and informs future research and evaluation efforts to improve the health of adolescents. Implications and opportunities for others working to prevent teen pregnancy, use evidence-based programs and evidence reviews, and conduct rigorous evaluations will be discussed as well as challenges of evaluating public health programs and how characteristics of implementation and adaptations to evidence-based programs can potentially affect evaluation findings. Presentation 1: Overview of OAH TPP Programs and Evaluations funded from 2010-2015 Presentation 2: Rigorous Evaluations of the Replication of Evidence-Based TPP Programs: Findings and Implications Presentation 3: Rigorous Evaluations of the New and Innovative Approaches to Prevent Teen Pregnancy: Findings and Implications Presentation 4: Implications of TPP Evaluation Results for the TPP Evidence Review Presentation 5: Lessons Learned and Implications for TPP Programs and Policies