BellyitchBlog

The Department of Health and Human Services is cutting off grants for teen pregnancy prevention programs across the country, leaving the groups that receive the grants — and Democratic members of Congress — perplexed.

The dozens of localities that receive funding for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, a program that began under former President Barack Obama in 2010, were taken aback when the date was changed last month on their notice of award documents from an office within HHS, noting that eir grants would end in June 2018, instead of in 2020. That means they won’t receive roughly $200 million they were expecting to receive over that two-year period.

“Needless to say, this was a surprise to everyone, all 81 grantees,” said Bill Albert, chief innovation officer at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

“I think what has been confounding for a lot of the grantees is there really has been no specific explanation for why the grant is ending two years early,” Albert added.

The closest thing to an explanation grantees have heard, he said, is the grants didn’t quite align with administration priorities. But grantees aren’t the only ones perplexed. Democratic senators and members of Congress have written HHS Secretary Tom Price, asking who made the decision to cut the grant short and what the justification is. The program is not included in Mr. Trump’s 2018 budget proposal.

“These notices of shortened project periods are highly unusual, especially given that Congress has yet to act on FY 2018 appropriations,” a July 21 letter from 37 Democratic senators reads. “This action is short-sighted and puts at risk the health and well-being of women and our most vulnerable youth who depend on the evidenced-based work that TPP Program grantees are doing across the nation.”

Democratic members in the House sent a similar letter to Price.

Pregnancy rates continue to drop throughout the U.S., and have reached a new historic low, according to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There were 24.2 live births per 1,000 teens between the ages of 15 to 19 in 2014, according to the report in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. This represents a 61 percent decrease from 1991.

“The United States has made remarkable progress in reducing both teen pregnancy and racial and ethnic differences, but the reality is, too many American teens are still having babies,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in a statement today. “By better understanding the many factors that contribute to teen pregnancy we can better design, implement, evaluate, and improve prevention interventions and further reduce disparities.”

From 2006 to 2014, the teen birth rate declined 41 percent overall. The decrease was the largest among Hispanics, with a 51 percent drop (38 live births per 1,000 teens in 2014), followed by a 44 percent drop among African Americans (34.9 live births per 1,000 teens in 2014), and a 35 percent drop among whites (17.3 live births per 1,000 teens in 2014.)

Continue reading

teen pregnancy

Current Administration Cut Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs Funding At Time With US Teen Pregnancy on Decline

Report: US Teen Pregnancy Rate Falls to a Historic low