Key content covered by the program consists of:

• Knowledge of pregnancy risk and prevention.
• Knowledge about STI and HIV risk, prevention, transmission, treatment, and consequences.
• Perception of individual risk for pregnancy, HIV, and other STIs and their consequences if teenagers engage in unprotected sex.
• Knowledge of how to be abstinent or use birth control methods effectively and how to access health care information and contraception (including condoms).
• Effective and ineffective refusal skills.
• Social and peer norms, as well as personal attitudes about abstinence, sex, unprotected sex, condoms, and contraception.
• Refusal and communication skills in pressure situations in order to avoid pregnancy and STIs.
• Skills to obtain health care information and contraception from a clinic and use it.
• Skills to communicate with parents or other adults about teen sexual activity and birth control.

Helping youth avoid unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmissible infections is a challenge that faces our communities.

Children having children is a problem with dire consequences for both the young people themselves and for society as a whole. Young people with children have sharply reduced education and employment opportunities and a poorer quality of life.

Meeting their needs places a severe burden on both families and public resources. Moreover, sexually active teens are at great risk of contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.