SYV Yakima County Sexual Risk Avoidance Program (YC-SRAE) - Safe Yakima’s Yakima County Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (YC-SRAE) Project is designed to counteract the compounding social, emotional, cultural, economic, and environmental factors that increase the likelihood youth will engage in risky sexual activity and other health-compromising behaviors. The project is grounded in Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1973) and the Social Development Strategy (Hawkins & Catalano, 1985), both of which underpin effective behavior change interventions and inform national best practices for sexual risk avoidance education. The YC-SRAE Project targets youth ages 10- 19 in Yakima County, Washington. Specifically, those experiencing poverty, housing instability, exposure to substance use and overdose, school disengagement (e.g., truancy, risk of academic failure), trauma, family violence, trafficking (e.g., drug-, sex-, gangtrafficking), and geographic or linguistic isolation. In Yakima County, these populations are often concentrated in the Lower Valley and rural or tribal communities, where overburdened youth-serving systems and limited cultural responsiveness in existing services exacerbates significant barriers to prevention. The project directly responds to urgent needs highlighted in the Yakima County STI Services Report (2025), which identified lack of trauma-informed, abstinence-based education and a severe gap in access for Yakima County families. YC-SRAE will deliver a multimodal learning experience grounded in Love Notes 4.1 SRA Edition, a federally approved, evidence-based curriculum shown through randomized controlled trials to reduce sexual initiation, improve relationship skills, and decrease teen pregnancy rates. This will be supplemented by Positive Youth Development (PYD) activities designed to: (1) build decision-making and self-regulation skills, (2) reinforce abstinencebased standards, (3) improve healthy relationship skills, and (4) promoting protective factors via community and peer connection, mentorship, and future orientation. Over the two-year grant period, Safe Yakima and its committed network of partners will serve 1,125 adolescent males and females throughout Yakima County. Programming is offered in English and Spanish, and referrals will be coordinated through community partners with experience in youth services. Participants will also receive age-appropriate education on reproductive health, coercion prevention, substance use resistance, and success sequencing. Success sequencing is a critical protective framework emphasizing goal setting, education, employment, and healthy relationships (Capaldi & Crosby, 2021; Caplan, 2021). Safe Yakima’s efforts to educate and increase awareness is driven by local needs to provide positive community-centered youth development activities that reduce the impact of negative social, economic, and environmental factors which may predispose youth to high-risk behavior and sexual activity.
