Ineffective Obama-era grant program to reduce teen pregnancy on the chopping block

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the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program (abbreviated, confusingly, to TPP and part of a 2010 appropriations act), which hands out grants to public and private entities to provide “medically accurate and age appropriate” pregnancy-reduction programs for adolescents, hasn’t produced much in the way of results. “Evidence-based” meant that each of the programs was supposed to rigorously analyzed (including replications with different teen populations) for effectiveness, and a report duly issued. That report, covering about 40 percent of the programs financed by the nearly half a billion dollars that had been poured into TPP grants from FY 2010 through FY 2014, emerged from the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Adolescent Health in 2016.

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In some cases, the grant programs for reducing pregnancy actually showed increases in reported pregnancy and the likelihood of becoming pregnant. Even for some programs that showed short-term positive results, the improvements usually disappeared within a few months…. Only four of the more than 75 replications were found effective, and even then they were not found effective over time. Only eight of the 27 programs trying new approaches had even mildly positive results. Many of the programs weren’t even evaluated, with only 41 of the 102 grantees reporting results on effectiveness.

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The grants, ranging in size from $500,000 to $10 million, went to states, cities, university health departments, school districts, and after-school programs run by such entities as Volunteers of America and Planned Parenthood, produced such results (summarized by Hemingway) as:

Latino teens offered the program after school had similar rates of sexual debut, contraceptive use at last sex encounter, and contraceptive use in the past three months relative to youth offered a fitness and nutrition program both immediately after and six months after the program ended.

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Women offered four weeks of access to [a TPP program at Tulane University] reported similar rates of reliable contraceptive use, pregnancy, and chlamydia or gonorrhea infection as women offered a nutrition and wellness program.

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