This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation digital report shares highlights from the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation, a large multisite evaluation conducted from 2015 to 2022 to identify strategies for improving the delivery and effectiveness of healthy marriage and relationship education programs. This report describes the five grantees —in Georgia, Florida, Denver, Missouri, and Texas— and the services they provided. To capture the perspectives and experiences of the people most directly affected by the programs, this report also tells the personal stories of some of the program staff and participants who contributed to STREAMS.

The findings from the Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) impact studies, a large multisite evaluation conducted from 2015 to 2022 to identify strategies for improving the delivery and effectiveness of healthy marriage and relationship education programs, are summarized in this Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation webpage. The webpage offers a series of site-specific impact reports which present findings from additional exploratory analyses and discuss the implications of the impact findings for healthy marriage and relationship education programming and research.

This Office on Planning, Research and Evaluation infographic highlights the findings from a meta-analysis conducted as part of a large-scale federal evaluation called Testing Identified Elements for Success in Fatherhood Programs (Fatherhood TIES). Fatherhood TIES identifies fatherhood program core components and then rigorously tests the impact of the core components on outcomes related to fathers’ parenting, healthy relationships with coparents, individual well-being, and economic stability; the findings offer new information about what components of a fatherhood program might most affect fathers’ parenting knowledge and skills, well-being, and healthy relationships with co-parents, as well as their economic stability.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) held the Linking Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Families to Employment and Economic Opportunities Meeting in August 2017. This meeting allowed TANF program representatives from around the country the opportunity to learn about promising practices and actionable implementation strategies to improve employment outcomes and economic independence among TANF families. This session offers popular curriculum models for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention program grantees, including abstinence education and Personal Responsibility Education Program, one of the largest federally funded programs designed to address adolescent pregnancy and prepare youth for successful transition to adulthood.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) held the Linking Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Families to Employment and Economic Opportunities Meeting in August 2017. This meeting allowed TANF program representatives from around the country the opportunity to learn about promising practices and actionable implementation strategies to improve employment outcomes and economic independence among TANF families. This session included the efforts of the Office of Adolescent Health to Coordinate adolescent health initiatives across HHS, including Teenage Pregnancy Prevention programs.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) held the Linking Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Families to Employment and Economic Opportunities Meeting in August 2017. This meeting allowed TANF program representatives from around the country the opportunity to learn about promising practices and actionable implementation strategies to improve employment outcomes and economic independence among TANF families. This session included the TANF efforts to reduce non-martial births, including abstinence programs, visiting nurse services, and services for youth such as teen pregnancy prevention, counseling, and after-school programs.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief highlights evidence on the impacts of the Teen Choice curriculum for youth in alternative schools in and around New York City. Because alternative schools provide supplemental services to address the specific needs of youth, these schools often find it difficult to fit pregnancy prevention programming into the regular school day. The program was delivered by trained staff from the program developer, Inwood House, with federal grant funding to the New York State Department of Health from the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), one of the largest federally funded programs designed to address adolescent pregnancy and prepare youth for successful transition to adulthood.

Sexually active adolescents are vulnerable to adverse health outcomes, such as unintended pregnancy. Empowering youth to make informed decisions, specifically decisions to avoid sexual risks, helps them avoid the potential negative consequences of adolescent sexual activity and contributes to their optimal health and well-being. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief presents a program model for sexual risk cessation. The model describes program inputs—the overall design, program features, and the infrastructure needed to support implementation—and implementation outputs—that is, aspects of staff, service delivery, and youth responsiveness—that can be assessed to know whether implementation occurred as expected. In addition, the program model specifies youth outcomes it intends to affect.

The avoidance of sexual activity among youth not only prevents unplanned pregnancies but can also promote healthy outcomes and contribute to the positive development of youth. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report provides summary estimates of the net lifetime benefit that accrues when a single adolescent chooses to delay voluntary sexual activity. These estimates are useful for valuing the type of changes in behavior that are possible in response to federally funded and other sexual risk avoidance and teen pregnancy prevention programs.

The Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) is one of the largest federally funded programs designed to address adolescent pregnancy. PREP legislation requires grantees incorporate into their programs content on at least three of six adulthood preparation subjects (APSs): adolescent development, healthy life skills, educational and career success, parent-child communication, financial literacy, and healthy relationships. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report presents conceptual models for each of the six APSs, and a unified framework that identifies commonalities across the models and provides guidance for including a positive youth development approach in APS programming.