Last week we awarded 4 community-based contracts for the new Personal Responsibility Education Program funds to prevent teen pregnancy in AZ.  The funding we’ll be passing through to our new contractors is part of the Affordable Care Act– and requires programs educate adolescents on both abstinence and contraception as ways to prevent pregnancy and STDs.  All projects we selected for funding emphasize abstinence as the surest way to avoid pregnancy and STDs. 

The new contractors are Pima Prevention Partnership, Pinal Hispanic Council, Worthy Institute and Arizona Youth Partnership.   Two of these grantees (Pima Prevention Partnership & Arizona Youth Partnership) are also current contractors with us for the Abstinence Education Program, and have many years of experiencing implementing abstinence programs.  Pinal Hispanic Council is a behavioral health provider, and the Worthy Institute is a community-based organized focused on prevention efforts, particularly within the African American community.    

All contracts became effective October 1 with school based services being implemented in January 2012 and community based services being initiated as early as November 2011.  We’ll likely need to do a next round of proposals for services in the targeted areas that were not addressed in the selected contracts- including Mesa West, Glendale Central, Alhambra, Encanto, Phoenix Central City, Tucson Southeast, Tucson North Central, Casa Grande, Coolidge, Florence and Nogales with our remaining $340K. 

These new projects augment the recently awarded federal Abstinence Education contracts which were awarded to  Pima Prevention Partnership, Arizona Youth Partnership, Catholic Charities, and National Community Health Partners on July 1…  serving thousands of youth and partners in 20 communities throughout the state.