SMART Program (Safe, Mutual, Accountability, Respect, and Trust): Sexual Risk Avoidance Education for Youth Ages 10 to 19 - Project Summary/Abstract Project Title: SMART Program (Safe, Mutual, Accountability, Respect, Trust) Foothill Family Service proposes the two-year SMART Program (Safe, Mutual, Accountability, Respect, and Trust) to provide evidence-based, age-appropriate, culturally responsive, trauma-informed Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) to 500 youth ages 10 to 19 in the San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County. SMART will serve approximately 250 youth annually through participating school districts, Just Us 4 Youth (JU4Y), Foothill Family service locations, and established referral pathways in Azusa, Baldwin Park, El Monte, South El Monte, La Puente, Monrovia, and Pomona. Local need is substantial: poverty reaches 23.7 percent in parts of the service area, and the estimated adolescent birth rate is 9.3 per 1,000 females ages 15 to 19, compared with approximately 6 per 1,000 in Los Angeles County and California. Youth also face risks related to dating violence and coercion, substance use, trauma, school disengagement, and limited supportive adult connections. SMART will deliver the complete 13-lesson Love Notes 4.1 curriculum sequence, with youth ages 10 to 13 receiving the Love Notes 4.1 Middle School Adaptation and youth ages 14 to 19 receiving Love Notes 4.1 Abstinence Only (AO), Federal Version. Love Notes and its middle school adaptation support a trauma-informed approach by empowering youth who have experienced childhood adversity and helping prevent adverse childhood experiences in the next generation. Through strengths-based, skills-focused instruction, participants build communication, decision-making, self-efficacy, and healthy relationship skills and define goals for relationships and family life without being required to disclose personal experiences. All instruction will maintain an unambiguous and primary emphasis on voluntarily avoiding nonmarital sexual activity as the optimal health behavior for youth while addressing the required A–F topics. A strengths-based Positive Youth Development approach will be embedded throughout implementation, with selected Mind Matters 2.0 lessons further strengthening trauma-informed coping, emotional regulation, resilience, protective factors, and help-seeking for youth ages 12 to 19 without replacing required Love Notes content or dosage. Two bilingual Case Managers will facilitate approximately 18 group cycles annually. SMART will also provide orientations for schools, families, and community partners; maintain referral and follow-up pathways; engage a quarterly Youth Feedback Panel; and use fidelity monitoring, performance measurement, and continuous quality improvement to support implementation. SMART directly advances ACF priorities of Promoting Work and Self-Sufficiency, Promoting Marriage and Family Formation, Gold-Standard Research, and Ensuring Value Alignment in Funding by connecting sexual risk avoidance and personal responsibility with education, full-time employment, economic self-sufficiency, healthy marriage, responsible parenthood, and stable family formation through evidence-based curricula, performance measurement, fidelity monitoring, and data-informed improvement. Foothill Family also brings a track record of achieving service targets through prior ACF-funded programs. By September 29, 2028, SMART expects at least 85 percent of the 500 enrolled youth to complete the required curriculum sequence and targets measurable improvements in SRAE knowledge; intentions to voluntarily avoid nonmarital sexual activity and delay sexual initiation until marriage; healthy relationship, communication, boundary-setting, and refusal skills; future planning and supportive adult connections; and recognition of coercion, dating violence, trafficking warning signs, and appropriate help-seeking responses. Together, these outcomes support youth in avoiding nonmarital sexual activity and associated risks while making healthy, purposeful, and future-oriented choices.
