Federal Resources

CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health created a Web page especially for teens. Designed with input from teens, the Web page aims to motivate teens to make healthy choices about sex by providing empowering messages on specific actions that teens can take to prevent teen pregnancy. This effort is part of the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Communitywide Initiative, which is a partnership between CDC and the HHS, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Office of Adolescent Health.

This website from CDC provides information and data about teen pregnancy. Sections of the site target resources for parents, guardians, and health care providers. It also includes videos, podcasts, reports, a social media tool kit and other resources focused on teen pregnancy and teen pregnancy prevention.

Show Your Love is a national campaign that promotes preconception health and healthcare with the goal of increasing the number of women planning pregnancies, and engaging in healthy behaviors prior to conception, and encouraging women who do not want to become pregnant to choose healthy behaviors and achieve their goals.

CDC provides a range of social media tools to promote your teen pregnancy prevention efforts. This quick reference guide can be used as a companion to the CDC Social Media Toolkit for Health Communicators  [PDF- 3.76MB], and specifically highlights a number of social media tools with credible, science-based teen pregnancy prevention messages from the CDC. These free, easy-to-use communication tools can help expand the reach of your health messages and help increase public engagement.

This report, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics, illustrates that the teen birth rate in the United States declined 25 percent between 2007-2011, a record low, with the steepest declines seen for Hispanic teenagers.

FYSB supports the organizations and communities that work every day to reduce the risk of youth homelessness, adolescent pregnancy and domestic violence. Learn more about FYSB programs.

This slideshow, developed by the National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth, highlights five groups of teens that sexual health educators should include in pregnancy prevention efforts. The list includes young men, teen moms, rural youth, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning) youth, and teens living in areas where pregnancy rates have declined.

This Web site provides information on and links to school health strategies, research and evaluation tools, Youth Risk Behavior Survey data, evidence-based guidelines for school health programs, and adolescent and school health program resources and tools.

In recognition of May as National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month, four HHS leaders discuss what the federal government is doing to prevent teen pregnancy and their charge to communities. 

In this podcast from the National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth, Karl Kallgren, director of the Union City Sustained Youth Development Project, discusses the youth program that has helped teen pregnancy rates drop by 20 percent in a rural Pennsylvania community.

In this video, the Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) presents to Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention grantees on incorporating relationship abuse prevention into their programming. FYSB also shares a web-based toolkit available to grantees to incorporate into their programming. 

The Board on Children, Youth, and Families (BCYF) addresses a variety of policy-relevant issues related to the health and development of children, youth, and families. It does so by convening experts to weigh in on matters from the perspective of the behavioral, social, and health sciences.

In a podcast featured in the latest update from the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth, Bryan Samuels, commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families, and Andrew Barnett, executive director of the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, discuss the need to include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth in teen pregnancy prevention efforts.

This fact sheet provides information about the issue of teen pregnancy among younger teens and what the federal government, doctors and nurses, parents, and teens themselves can do about it. 

This article provides ideas for things youth programs do to keep up the positive momentum when an increase in teen pregnancy rates is experienced, despite a national decline. 

Authorized by Congress through the Affordable Care Act, PREP was designed to reduce teen pregnancies and their negative consequences. State PREP grantees had discretion to design their programs, but were expected to be evidence-based, provide education on both abstinence and contraceptive use, and educate youth on at least three of six adulthood preparation topics. States are also encouraged to target their programming to high-risk populations. This report illustrates states’ program decisions, using data gathered through telephone interviews with state grantee officials. Learn more (PDF, 92 pages). 

Developed by the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program’s Training and Technical Assistance and Meeting Logistical Support project for the Family and Youth Services Bureau, this toolkit can help educators and youth workers integrate relationship violence prevention into their existing adolescent pregnancy prevention programming. 

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is the United States government's principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially for those who are least able to help themselves.

This podcast by the National Clearinghouse on Youth and Families (NCFY) features program coordinator at the Bristol HUB Youth Center in Vermont, Ryan Krushenick, who leads a popular teen pregnancy prevention curriculum tailored to be welcoming to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth. He talks to NCFY how to practice inclusive teen pregnancy prevention work.

The archive of this OAH webcast, which highlighted the role of positive youth development in the prevention of teen pregnancy and other risky behaviors, is now available for viewing. A resource list (PDF, 4 pages) of suggested readings from the webcast speakers is also available, as well as the archived #TeenPYD Twitter conversation. 

This podcast, from the National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth, features Tiara Bennett, the writer of a short film about a high school couple dealing with unplanned pregnancy. The film can used as a conversation starter and tool to educate young people. 

This report summarizes 2009 PRAMS data from 29 states, presenting information on the prevalence of health insurance coverage stability the month before pregnancy, during pregnancy, and at the time of delivery. Results show most women had stable coverage across the three periods, with nearly one-third experiencing changes in health insurance coverage in the period between the month before pregnancy and the time of delivery. These changes were largely due to starting out uninsured or having private insurance before pregnancy and having Medicaid at delivery. 

Two new video series address what works for teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) and the impact of TPP programs on the lives of adolescents. The first series provides a personal look at TPP programs in local communities. The initial video highlights Sé tú mismo (Be Yourself), a positive youth development program for Latino youth in Washington, D.C., and Montgomery County, Maryland, and includes the perspective of teens in the program. The second video series features OAH staff and partners answering frequently asked questions about TPP, including information on why U.S. organizations should focus on TPP and where the country is on this issue. 

Using data from the 1988 to 2011-2013 National Survey of Family Growth, this report provides trends and recent national estimates of sexual activity, contraceptive use, and childbearing among teenagers ages 15-19. Key findings include:

1. In 2011-2013, 44% of female teenagers and 47% of male teenagers had experienced sexual intercourse, percentages which have declined significantly over the past 25 years.
2. Seventy-nine percent of female teenagers and 84% of male teenagers used a contraceptive method at first sexual intercourse, the most common of which was the condom.
3. Young women who did not use a method of contraception at first sexual intercourse were twice as likely to become teen mothers as those who used a method.

This article describes a pilot program in which researchers examined if Family Foundations, an evidence-based program designed to help adult parents of young children "co-parent," could be tailored for low income, urban minority teen mothers and the fathers. The article highlights the authors' main observations about the successes and challenges of the pilot and takeaways for organizations that serve teen parents.