Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program
Established in 2010 with bipartisan support, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPPP) was created in recognition of the proven failures of abstinence-only education. TPPP mandates a wide range of comprehensive, age-appropriate educational programming covering unintended pregnancy, HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Programs that receive funding range from the Choctaw Nation’s work to combat teen pregnancy in Oklahoma to the Chicago Department of Public Health’s counseling and testing for STIs. Though the teen birth rate in the United States is still high compared to other industrialized nations, it has declined dramatically since the creation of TPPP.
But Trump political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have slowly been dismantling the program by removing anti-discrimination protections and reversing LGBTQ inclusion. And in in July 2018, the Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) abruptly cut funding for TPPP, shocking the health professionals and professors running the 81 grant projects nationwide. Several federal judges ruled against the agency’s plan to end five year grants prematurely, however, and HHS has since been forced to resume grants — for the time being.