In December 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2010, which included $114.5 million for the President’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative. This marked a notable shift in how the United States addresses sex education and the prevention of unintended pregnancy, HIV, and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The new initiative will be administered by the newly established Office of Adolescent Health within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), working in cooperation with the Administration for Children and Families, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other relevant HHS agencies.

 

 

o   At least $75 million will be available for “replicating programs that have been proven effective through rigorous evaluation to reduce teenage pregnancy, behavioral risk factors underlying teenage pregnancy, or other associated risk factors.”

 

o   At least $25 million will be available for “research and demonstration grants to develop, replicate, refine, and test additional models and innovative strategies for preventing teenage pregnancy.”

 

 

 

 

In addition to creating the new office and teen pregnancy prevention funding stream, the final Fiscal Year 2010 appropriations bill eliminated all existing funding for discretionary abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, including funding for the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) grant program and the portion of the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA) that had been tied to the eight-point definition of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs.

 Update April 2010