By Gina Lepore, MEd | March 16, 2017
Research Associate, ETR

 “Everything is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”

This saying is usually credited to Oscar Wilde, probably erroneously, but I love it anyway! It brings home an essential truth. When we talk about norms related to sex and sexual consent, we are often actually talking about norms related to power.

By Lizanne Reynolds, JD | January 30, 2017
dfusion

I am excited to be working on a new dfusion program called Live Your Best Life AHORA! This is an innovative teen pregnancy prevention and sexual risk reduction program for rural Hispanic youth and their parents in California’s Central Valley. Our program partner is the California Health Collaborative (CHC), which has worked closely with the community for many years to promote healthy practices.

By Vignetta Charles, PhD | November 15, 2016
Chief Science Officer, ETR

ETR is thrilled to see a new article, just released today. It is published by our close colleague, Dr. John Santelli, and his team at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. The Santelli team’s comprehensive work demonstrates that when we narrow income inequality and increase opportunities for education, we positively affect youth health and wellbeing. The study explicitly links increases in investment in education to declines in teen childbearing.

By ETR | July 19, 2016
Note: We're posting about some of the presentations ETR researchers and professional development specialists are offering at the Office of Adolescent HealthTeen Pregnancy Prevention Grantee Conference July 19-21.

ETR researchers are big fans of collaboration in program evaluation. “Collaboration can ensure that your evaluation design is realistic, appropriate and effective for the context,” explains ETR researcher Pam Drake, PhD.

She’ll be joining partners Mona Desai, MPH, from Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles, and Sarah Kershner, PhD, from the South Carolina Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, to discuss the ways collaboration has supported effective evaluations in several teen pregnancy prevention programs.

Here are some other ways collaboration helps.

By ETR | July 19, 2016
Note: We're posting about some of the presentations ETR researchers and professional development specialists are offering at the Office of Adolescent Health Teen Pregnancy Prevention Grantee Conference July 19-21.

Here’s a challenge facing anyone delivering evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs. Educators usually want to adapt programs to boost their relevance with the teens they’re working with. Program managers need to be sure any adaptations are done ways that maintain the fidelity and effectiveness of a program. If there is an evaluation component in the project, managers also need to be sure that adaptations have been noted and are taken into consideration when data is analyzed and reported.

How do you feel about fidelity monitoring of your teen pregnancy prevention programs? Have you faced challenges balancing these dynamics between adaptation and program fidelity?

By ETR | July 19, 2016
Note: We're posting about some of the presentations ETR researchers and professional development specialists are offering at the Office of Adolescent Health Teen Pregnancy Prevention Grantee Conference July 19-21.

“You can’t affect the health and well-being of youth if no one knows you exist,” proclaims Kathy Plomer, MPH. Kathy is a member of ETR’s DASH Professional Learning Collaborative. In a perfect world, she acknowledges, doing good work would be enough to get people’s attention, support and participation.

“But we don’t live in that perfect world,” she continues. “Sometimes you need to employ some good, old-fashioned marketing techniques to get noticed.”

By ETR | July 19, 2016
Note: We're posting about some of the presentations ETR researchers and professional development specialists are offering at the Office of Adolescent Health Teen Pregnancy Prevention Grantee Conference July 19-21.

Teen parents face a number of challenges. When a teen mother has a rapid repeat birth—a second (or more) child before age 20—the challenges become even greater. Almost 1 in 5 teen births is a repeat birth, and only about 1 in 5 sexually active teen mothers use the most effective birth control methods.

For the past 6 years, ETR researcher Pam Drake, PhD, has been collaborating with Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA) Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine on a project designed to support teen parents and prevent unintended repeat births. One strategy in the project is to increase the use of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). These contraceptives, including IUDs and hormonal implants, are the most effective available today, and are safe for most women, including adolescents.

On Wednesday, July 20, Dr. Drake and co-presenters Mona Desai, MPH, Leslie Clark, PhD and Vivian Okonta, all from CHLA, are offering a poster describing how they measured the consistency of contraception use over time with the teen mothers participating in their project.

By ETR | July 18, 2016

A dynamic group of ETR researchers and professional development specialists will be presenting posters and panels at the upcoming Office of Adolescent Health Teen Pregnancy Prevention Grantee Conference. The conference takes place in Baltimore July 19-21. The theme is “Connecting the Dots: Collaborating to Achieve Lasting Impacts for Youth.” We’ll be posting here about some of their presentations over the coming days.

We hope you’ll keep an eye out for these posts. Even if your work isn’t specific to the field of adolescent sexual health, you’ll find insights and information useful for program developers, health education researchers, front line providers and people who design and deliver trainings.

The conference hashtag is #2016TPP. Check the LinkedIn Teen Pregnancy Prevention Networking Group to hear more about TPP and to connect with attendees.