PREPare for Success

North Carolina’s teen pregnancy rate consistently ranks among the highest in the nation and is considerably higher than the U.S. rate. In 2010, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services was awarded federal funding through the Affordable Care Act to continue its work addressing teen pregnancy in the state. This funding, known as the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) , is designed to educate adolescents on both abstinence and contraception to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS, and adulthood preparation subjects such as healthy relationships and parent-child communication. In North Carolina the PREP initiative is called PREPare for Success.

PREPare for Success funding represents a critical opportunity to support the implementation and institutionalization of the recently passed Healthy Youth Act , which requires North Carolina schools to adopt a comprehensive sexuality education approach in health education classes. To achieve this goal, PREPare for Success funding will be used to support the North Carolina Comprehensive School Health Training Center to provide teacher training, curricular materials and ongoing technical support to approximately 25 school systems to implement the Making Proud Choices! evidence-based curriculum as an integrated component of their middle school Healthful Living curriculum. Preference for funding will be given to school systems with high teen pregnancy/Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) and low educational attainment rates.

The second approach to be used with the PREP funding is implementation of the evidence-based curriculum Teen Outreach Program in selected communities. Ten grants have been awarded to local agencies to provide Teen Outreach Program through a competitive Request for Applications (RFA) process. The delivery of Teen Outreach Program will be through curriculum-guided discussion in addition to volunteer service activities. This funding will build on a long history of adolescent pregnancy prevention activities in selected sites in North Carolina and expand services to a high risk, vulnerable population of young people who live in communities with high teen pregnancy and birth rates.

For additional information about the PREPare for Success program, please review the PREP Fact Sheet (PDF, 396 KB) or contact us.

PREP in Your Community

To find out if there is a PREP project in your community, please check the list of currently funded programs (PDF, 180 KB). If not, please contact your local health department about teen pregnancy prevention programs that they may provide.