Rhode Island Equity-Centered Approaches to Teen Pregnancy Prevention - The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) will center equity to implement a multi-component, systems- and community-based approach to promote adolescent health and address teen pregnancy prevention. As Rhode Island’s lead public health agency, RIDOH serves as a statewide leader promoting healthy adolescent development. RIDOH envisions that all Rhode Island (RI) adolescents are empowered to thrive, build supportive connections, and develop healthy behaviors to optimize their health and well-being. RIDOH’s proposed project, Rhode Island Equity-Centered Approaches for Teen Pregnancy Prevention, reinforces this vision by promoting comprehensive, coordinated, and equitable systems of support to empower adolescents to actively direct their own lives and positively impact their communities. The RIDOH TPP Project has six interrelated components: (1) Application of a health equity lens and the Social Ecological Model to promote optimal adolescent health and address disparities related to teen pregnancy and associated risk behaviors; (2) Implementation of evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention curricula based on cognitive-behavioral theories; (3) Utilization of a system-thinking approach to maximize reach and leverage community resources; (4) Youth, family, and community-centered engagement throughout all stages of program planning, implementation, and evaluation; (5) Family/caregiver engagement and support; (6) and Community mobilization through enhanced referral systems for supportive services. The priority populations are adolescents residing in Rhode Island’s four core communities and adolescents engaged in out-of-home care or juvenile justice. The core cities are identified as communities with at least 25% of children living in poverty. The priority adolescent populations experience disproportionately high rates of teen pregnancy and birth, among other adverse health outcomes. Many RI youth living in the state’s core cities encounter stressful environments every day, where unemployment is high, violence and substance use may be present, and housing conditions are poor. These social determinants of health can impact adolescent sexual/reproductive health decision-making and behavior. This teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) proposal is innovative in two ways. First, RIDOH will implement grant activities centered around equity using a theory-based framework for understanding, exploring, and addressing individual- family- community- and system-level factors that contribute to teen pregnancy. Second, RIDOH will enhance and evaluate systems supporting adolescent health, specifically to reduce risk and prevent teen pregnancy. Together with the RI Adolescent Health Coalition, RIDOH will engage traditional and nontraditional community partners to create systems transformation and address how RI can have an impact on “upstream” factors shown to contribute to the risk of teen pregnancy. These factors include youth disengagement from school and limited opportunities in a teen’s community for positive youth development. During the proposed five-year project, RIDOH will partner with state agencies, local governments, school departments, community-based organizations (CBOs), and faith-based organizations to serve youth in the target communities/populations. RIDOH, together with the implementation partners, will implement evidence-based programs to scale for adolescents (ages 11-19) in the target communities/populations. RIDOH aims to serve a minimum of 500 youth in Year 1 and 1,500 youth in Years 2-5. The TPP project will offer education and support to engage family and caregivers of youth participants. As overarching goals to advance equity, promote optimal adolescent health and well-being, and support a holistic approach that includes reduction of risk and prevention of teen pregnancy, RIDOH will work with youth-serving systems and community-based partners to strengthen referrals to supportive services for adolescents.
