Substantial evidence supports comprehensive sex education programs as effective means of promoting adolescent sexual health, but evidence on the effect of state-level sex education policy is inconclusive. Multiple states in the U.S. afford local authority in school policy, and existing literature calls for investigation of the impact of local…

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy published free online lessons that help students take action to prevent unplanned pregnancy and complete their education. From the fall of 2012 to the spring of 2014, approximately 2,800 students took the online lessons and participated in pre- and post-lesson evaluation surveys at four…

This is the fifth and final report of a longitudinal study examining the use of a comprehensive system of prevention and early intervention services in Palm Beach County, and how its use relates to the outcomes of children and families living in four targeted geographic areas (TGAs) with high rates of poverty, teen pregnancy, crime, and child…

Nearly one million adolescent girls in the United States become pregnant annually, which has significant negative social and economic consequences. The number of teen pregnancies totals 50,000 in Florida, where state statutes require that these adolescents be provided with ongoing education and other support services in schools. While school…

Ignorance, misinformation, and a failure to personalize the risk for acquisition of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) virus has created a situation in which the incidence of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) seroprevalence among minority childbearing women in a Florida county is increasing. An increased incidence in this population…

For more than a decade, Florida's Palm Beach County has been building an infrastructure of prevention and early intervention services to promote and support the healthy development and school readiness of children from birth to age 8. The county began this effort with a set of programs focused on serving families in four targeted geographic areas…