The Elevatus Training Study: A Randomized Evaluation of Reproductive Health Education for Young Adults with Intellectual Disabilities - Child Trends, in partnership with Elevatus Training ("Elevatus"), proposes to conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluation of Connect: Healthy Relationships and Reproductive Health ("Connect"), an innovative reproductive health education program for young adults with intellectual disabilities (ID). Connect is based on Elevatus' main curriculum, strengthened and redesigned through Elevatus' participation in an Office of Population Affairs Teen Pregnancy Prevention Innovation Hub (OPA TPP IH) in 2024–2025. Connect aims to reduce unprotected sex and increase self-advocacy by building knowledge, self-efficacy, self-image, and skills for healthy relationships and informed sexual decision-making. This project seeks to reduce unintended adolescent pregnancy and STIs by piloting, rigorously evaluating, manualizing, and packaging Connect, and disseminating findings to key stakeholders, including individuals and entities that serve people with ID (schools, special educators, and transition programs), other PREIS grantees and federal agencies, researchers in the broader adolescent health field, program developers and implementers, and self-advocates and families within the ID community (“stakeholders”). The target population is young adults ages 18-19 with a diagnosed ID who have foster care experience, a group facing compounding risk for unintended pregnancy and STIs due to housing instability, disrupted relationships, and trauma exposure. The remaining sample will include other eligible young adults with a diagnosed ID ages 18-19 (or 18-20 if pregnant or parenting), a population that rarely receives healthy relationship or reproductive health education despite high rates of STIs and unintended teen pregnancy. Child Trends and Elevatus share a history of work on disability education and well-being: two joint OPA TPP IH grants, co-facilitated professional trainings, joint work reviewing, revising, and collecting data on this curriculum, and co-authored publications. Elevatus brings 15+ years hosting online classes; Child Trends brings a strong track record managing multi-component projects and rigorously evaluating interventions for federal funders. To evaluate Connect, 150 randomly assigned young adults will receive Connect (treatment, 26 weekly sessions), while 150 will receive Project SEARCH's self-paced, 8-lesson pre-employment curriculum (control). Connect will first undergo pilot testing with 20 young adults by the end of Phase 1. This research will help fill a critical gap because few reproductive health education programs have been developed for and tested with young adults with ID.
