Community organizations play an important role in supporting schools and families to make healthy decisions.
Steps You Can Take
- Support evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs.
- Identify youth in greatest need of prevention services.
- Promote youth development strategies that help teens avoid situations that can lead to risky behaviors.
- Sustain activities that help youth living in foster care and juvenile justice settings gain knowledge and skills needed to choose healthy behaviors.
- Help policy makers and other stakeholders understand how they can help reduce teen pregnancy.
Evidence-Based Programs
Evidence-based programs are those shown by research to be effective in changing at least one of the following behaviors that contribute to early pregnancy, STD, and HIV infection: delaying sexual initiation, reducing the frequency of sexual intercourse, reducing the number of sexual partners, or increasing the use of condoms and other contraceptives. For more information on implementing an evidence-based program, visit the Healthy Teen Network's evidence-based resource center.
