Teen Pregnancy Prevention

Making a Difference!

Making a Difference! An Evidence-Based, Abstinence Approach to Teen Pregnancy and HIV/STD Prevention is an 8-module curriculum that provides young adolescents with the knowledge, confidence, and skills necessary to reduce their risk of sexually transmitted diseases, HIV, and pregnancy by abstaining from sex. Specifically, this curriculum emphasizes that young adolescents should postpone sexual activity and that practicing abstinence is the only way to eliminate the risk for pregnancy and STDs, including HIV. The goals of the Making a Difference! program are to:

• Help young people change behaviors that place them at risk for HIV, STDs, and pregnancy.
• Delay the initiation of sex among sexually inexperienced youth.
• Reduce unprotected sex among sexually active youth.
• Help young people make proud and responsible decisions about their sexual behaviors.

Reducing the Risk

Reducing the Risk (RTR) is a 16-session program designed to help high school students delay the initiation of sex or increase the use of protection against pregnancy and STD/HIV, if they choose to have sex. Trained professionals work with students in North Idaho’s high schools to recognize social pressures and anticipate and prepare for risky situations where unwanted or unprotected sex can occur.’

RTR teaches high school students to:

• Evaluate the risks and consequences of becoming an adolescent parent or becoming infected with HIV or another sexually transmitted disease.
• Recognize that abstaining from sexual activity or using contraception are the only ways to avoid pregnancy, HIV infection and other STDs.
• Conclude that factual information about conception and protection is essential for avoiding teenage pregnancy, HIV infection and other STDs.
• Demonstrate effective communication skills for remaining abstinent and for avoiding unprotected sexual intercourse.

Families Talking Together

Families Talking Together is a parent-based intervention to prevent and/or reduce sexual risk behavior among adolescents. The main components of the intervention are designed to teach parents effective communication skills, build parent-adolescent relationships, help parents develop successful monitoring strategies, and teach adolescents assertiveness and refusal skills. The program can be delivered to parents either individually or in small group sessions, in a range of settings.