A Proposal for an Evaluation of Teen Pregnancy Prevention

Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program

  Teen pregnancy and reproduction carry significant social and financial expenses on short and long-term effects on teen parents and their children. Working in an urban area, I can see firsthand the pressures the female students experience at an early age to be sexually active. Most of my student's mothers are not involved in their lives. I chose to research this type of health and wellness plan because I am interested in implementing one in our school to educate the female students before they move on to middle school where there is less guidance, support, and education on teen pregnancy preventions programs. Research states that the kids of teenage moms are more likely to have poorer academic success and exit out of high school without graduating, encounter more health complications, end up imprisoned at some time in their teenage years, give birth as a teenager, and experience unemployment as a young adult (Hoffman, 2008). Research from NCHS data informing in 2018 stated that in the year 2017, the birth amounts of Hispanic adolescents were 28.9%, African American adolescents were 27.5% and are more than double the rate for Caucasian adolescents which was only 13.2% ethnicities (Martin, Hamilton, & Osterman, 2018). The American Indian/Alaska Native adolescent’s birth amount was 32.9%, which was the highest of all race and backgrounds (Martin, Hamilton, & Osterman, 2018). The program description and history section of this analysis will explain and expand on the data based teen pregnancy prevention programs which used a logical development for assessing and evaluating the program which has been recognized by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) TPP Evidence Review External (CDC, 2018).

Program Description and History

 The history of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program was designed by The Office of Adolescent Health (OAH). This specific Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Program is a nationwide, data-based platform that funds various administrations collaborating to prevent teen pregnancy in the United States. This TTP Program is invested and identified the need in both the implementation of data-based programs and the improvement and evaluation of fresh and inventive methods to prevent teen pregnancy. In the TPP Program, the overall goal and outcome are working with females that ages ten to nineteen and emphases on inhabitants with the highest need in order to decrease teen pregnancy and birth amounts.

The goals and outcomes are currently measured in The TPP Program by a PSBA-GTO. This stands for Promoting Science-Based Approaches to Teen Pregnancy Prevention Using Getting to Outcomes. This is a widespread guide to support teen pregnancy prevention program directors implement science-based methods as they design and implement objectives for prevention programs, design and implement process and outcome evaluations of programs, and achieve ways to increase and withstand programs that are accomplishing positive outcomes (Lesesne, Lewis & Fisher, 2016). One of the program’s major educational activities is community mobilization. This idea funds teen pregnancy prevention efforts by enabling community participants to implement action to assist in transformation is. This incorporates mobilizing essential assets, spreading informative education, creating a support system, and raising collaboration with neighborhoods and private zones in the areas (CDC, 2018). This activity is explained as helping construct community and collaborative activities and engage and have the community participate in positive efforts. Another activity is by implementing a holistic method in nontoxic and understanding settings, educating on trauma, and utilizing connections and referrals to adolescent-friendly facilities to influence a great number of adolescents (CDC, 2018). 

The environment for the program to be evaluated on and the greatest need for the program is determined by race, ethnicity,and the most at-risk populations, as well as youth who are homeless, residing in foster care, or have been incarcerated.

Stakeholder Engagement

  In this Teen Pregnancy Prevention Plan Finley et al. (2018) stated that the goal is to identify and describe research-based and strategies of best practices for stakeholder instruction in the public health initiatives in the targeted community. They directed a methodical literature review of strategies used for operational stakeholder instruction. Finley et al. (2018)  also stated that more than 400 articles were recovered at first; 59 articles saw criteria that was appropriate.

Next, within four steps, strategies were implemented into the community for support for the education of the stakeholders. These four steps are high-quality steps and are to recognize the needs and resources for the stakeholders, cultivate plans, implement personalized and convincing messages, and use implementation strategies (Finley, Suellentrop, Griesse, House & Brittain, 2018).

The stakeholders in this evaluation are parents, schools, and communities. The stakeholders that will participate will be public officials, parents, and community members that will be in charge of research centered approaches to help decrease adolescent pregnancy and improve teenage reproductive health. These stakeholders will be in charge of the teen's needs and finding obtainable resources in the targeted communities. They will also arrange for appropriate and ethnically adolescent educated reproductive health care resources that can be accessed easily in the community to all the targeted adolescents.

As a whole, these stakeholders will form relations between teen pregnancy prevention program associates and health centers that aid at-risk teens from this targeted community (CDC, 2018). In the targeted community, awareness will be raised about teen pregnancy, environmental, and social factors wellbeing. It is their job to arrange in evaluating particular activities implemented to increase mindfulness, inform, and involve individuals public health struggles.

Stakeholder Engagement Plan

Purpose and Logic Model

The Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Program from The US Department of Health is described as a nationwide, tiered, research approved program that allocates funding to various organizations nationwide to work on how to prevent teenage pregnancy (Feldman & Margolis, 2016). The OAH TPP Program devotes a bigger share of its grant funding in the implementation of research-based programs. These programs are confirmed to be an arduous evaluation to decrease teen pregnancy and unsafe sexual actions linked to teenage pregnancy. The program contains education on safe sex, adolescence growth, education on abstinence, and programs that are clinic-based. There are also other programs that are intended particularly for at-risk communities, for example, areas that teenagers are already teenage parents and adolescents currently incarcerated. The program sets aside money to fund investigations and demonstration plans to also develop and try out different models and inventive tactics to correct holes in what little knowledge they have pertaining to how to stop teenage pregnancy (Feldman & Margolis, 2016).

Logic Model Description

Behaviors-Determinants-Intervention (BDI) logic model is the model in this Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program. This determines the influence behaviors and is responsive to change in those behaviors and to the strategies and activities that are linked to the goals in the Behavior Determinants Intervention (CDC, 2018). Since there has been an increase in teen pregnancy, exposure to Sexually Transmitted Diseases and HIV, the CDC developed the BDI Logic Model. Research has stated from the CDC that decreasing and preventing adolescent pregnancy is connected to health goals and health and wellness strategies and activities for changing behaviors that have been identified. In this Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, what needs to be achieved is the health goal, change in the behavior, and determine influencing behaviors for the intervention to change as well. In the logic model for this program, the inputs are; TPP program panel, funding, environment, mobilization vans, the curriculum of the program, and the resources. The activities for the program are; informational and academic sessions, field trips, role-playing conversations, clinic visits, and assessments. The outputs are; individuals in the program, data reports, informational and literature worksheets and brochures for teens and their parents, assessment, and evaluation reports. The short term goal or outcome is changes in the teen's knowledge of teen pregnancy and safe sex. The intermediate goal or outcome is changes in the teen's attitudes and knowledge of teen pregnancy and safe sex. Lastly, the long term outcome, goal, and impact are changes in the teen's behavior.

Proposed Timeline and Potential Evaluation Budget

The proposed timeline was over a five year period. In 2010 the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program began, and it was one of six newly federal evidence-based initiatives.

OAH funded one hundred million in each of those five years starting in 2010 to duplicate evidence-based Teen Prevention Pregnancy Programs to one hundred and two organizations (Feldman & Margolis, 2016). These organizations helped design and evaluate fresh and inventive methods to prevent teenage pregnancy. There was an independent, efficient, and full analysis of the research to decrease teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and accompanying at-risk actions. This was concluded with rigorous evaluation reported to The HHS Pregnancy Prevention Evidence Review panel.

Evaluation Design

  According to Feldman and Margolis (2016), all projects were mandated to participate in a year-long implementation period that was phased in. This allowed them time to research for needs that were thoroughly assessed and to develop partnerships. This program was suitable for certain ages and medically correct, teens needed to be engaged in lessons and strategies, and great quality to maintain an implementation that required devotion to the prevention program. Fidelity, quantity, influence and retention, organizations, preparation, and dissemination data were used as the performance measure and were compiled and conveyed to OAH in phases of six months and reviewed to monitor the progress of the prevention program (Feldman & Margolis, 2016). Individuals that helped fund the program had to understand expectations from the evaluation, meaning that the standards had to meet with the research quality as made by the HHS Evidence Review team. The HHS Evidence Review team collected three-time points of data that the evaluation required. This included a baseline before the implementation of the program. Also, long and short term follow-ups along with collecting a behavioral outcome measure.

Evaluation Goals

What are the greatest issues that have the largest impact on behaviors in the teens in the TTP Program? Within two months, the teens participating in the TPP Program will be able to increase their knowledge and understanding about how to prevent teenage pregnancy from 50% to 80%. What behaviors can we genuinely decrease with the given resources, activities, and strategies? Within the next four months, the teens participating in the TPP Program will be able to increase the number of teens comprehending and discussing with their parents about abstinence and the risk of contracting an STD/HIV by 20%. What behaviors are most feasible to address in the at-risk community where these teens live? Within a year, the teens participating in the TPP Program will be able to increase from 15% to 30% from participating in the consistent use of effective contraception among sexually active teens in the TTP program.

References

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Teen Pregnancy in the United States. Reproductive Health: Teen Pregnancy [cited 2018 January 9]; Available from
•  https://www.cdc.gov/teenpregnancy/about/index.htm.
• Feldman, A., & Margolis, L. (2016). The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program (2010-2015): Synthesis of Impact Findings. American journal of public health, 106(S1), S9–S15. DOI:10.2105/AJPH.2016.303367
• Finley, C., Suellentrop, K., Griesse, R., House, L. D., & Brittain, A. (2018). Stakeholder Education for Community-Wide Health Initiatives: A Focus on Teen Pregnancy Prevention. Health Promotion Practice, 19(1), 38–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839917734521
• Hoffman, SD. (2008).  Kids Having Kids: Economic Costs and Social Consequences of Teen Pregnancy. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press.
• Lesesne, C., Lewis, K. & Fisher, D. (2016). Promoting Science-based Approaches to Teen Pregnancy Prevention Using Getting To Outcomes for Teen Pregnancy Prevention (PSBA-GTO). Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA.
• Martin, J., Hamilton, B. & Osterman, M. (2018).  Births in the United States, 2017. NCHS data brief. (318):1-8.
• Sedlak, A. &  Bruce, C. (2010). Youth's Characteristics and Backgrounds: Findings from the Survey of Youth in Residential Placement, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, and Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Editors.