The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) developed a brief intended primarily for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners working in the field of teen pregnancy prevention research. Most teen pregnancy prevention programs have been evaluated only once through a small-scale “efficacy trial.” Recent efforts have been made to study how programs perform when implemented on a broader scale, with different populations, or in new settings. The following brief provides practical guidance for making sense of the growing body of research related to replication studies.

This report from the Congressional Research Service examines data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics on teenage childbearing, offers potential explanations for high teen pregnancy and birth rates, and provides information about federal programs whose purpose is primarily to reduce teen pregnancy.

This report from the National Vital Statistics Reports presents data on United States births according to various characteristics. Data are presented for maternal age, birth order, race and ethnicity, marital status, and more.

This presentation highlights observations and findings from a yearlong study of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Reentry Employment Opportunities (REO) grant programs, with a focus on strategies for connecting justice-involved youth and adult returning citizens to work, education, and training programs. The presentation, given by ICF International at a congressional briefing on reentry and employment hosted by the Union Theological Seminary, provides a high-level overview of the study’s key findings, methods, existing research bases and promising practices in the areas of career pathways, assessment and case management, and justice collaborations.

This early implementation report by the Institute for Research on Poverty and Mathematica Policy Research provides interim findings from the Office of Child Support Enforcement’s (OCSE) Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration Project (CSPED), which began in Fall 2012 and ends in September 2017. The project is tracking activity and outcomes of CSPED programs in eight states. Child Support agencies in each state are providing enhanced child support services, employment assistance, parenting education, and case management services for noncustodial parents who experience difficulty meeting their child support obligations. The report looks at the first two years of CSPED, which consisted of a planning year and one year of program operations.

This paper from the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) calls attention to young parents and their children who live in poverty and geographical isolation – far from the service system infrastructure and safety nets developed to support families in need. The paper describes a scan of programs in Native American communities, rural areas, and suburban areas of concentrated poverty and highlights innovative strategies that serve the unique needs of young children and their families through a multigenerational approach.

More than 5 million U.S. children have had a parent in jail or prison at some point in their lives. The incarceration of a parent can have as much impact on a child’s well-being as abuse or domestic violence. However, while substantial amounts are spent on corrections, few resources exist to support family members left behind. This report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation shares proposals to address the increased poverty and stress experienced by the children of incarcerated parents.

This study investigated how parents characterize trade-offs associated with food insecurity with regard to parents’ mental health and child well-being. The results, published in the Maternal and Child Health Journal, suggest that parents in food insecure households recognize that trade-offs between food and other basic necessities are associated with their personal stress and poor mental health, which in turn affects their children’s health and development. Partnerships between health care providers, policymakers, and parents are essential to successfully address and prevent the poor child health outcomes of toxic stress associated with food insecurity and poverty.

In recent years, significant focus has been placed on the concept of toxic stress and the impact of adverse experiences in childhood on lifelong health and development. As scientific understanding continues to grow, community leaders are searching for ways to prevent and respond to toxic stress in the lives of young children and their families, in order to achieve healthy development and well-being for all children. Leaders from six communities worked together in 2015 with the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) through the Early Childhood-LINC Learning Lab on Community Approaches to Toxic Stress. The communities learned from each other’s experiences, discussed the challenges and opportunities they face, and generated ideas to improve the response to toxic stress in their own communities and in others. This issue brief presents their experiences and recommendations.