What do communities need to do to ensure healthy futures for their youth? How does this question pose more challenging choices for some communities that have high birth rates to adolescents and not for others? Which voices should be at the table to guide the decision-making process when addressing the needs of youth? These questions have been at the forefront of the experience of the last four years of California's Department of Health Services Community Challenge Grant (CCG)Program, currently the largest evaluation-based pregnancy prevention program in the United States. Initiated in 1996 with the legislative requirement for collaboration, the intent of CCG is to develop on a very large scale, a community-driven process for defining how to reduce birth rates to teens. The cycle is indeed large: the CCG community includes 134 Lead agencies and over 1,600 community-based organizations acting as partners and subcontractors. The experience of DHS' Office of Community Challenge Grants and its CCG Projects have faced in (1) guiding and building local capacity to collaborate and (2)mobilizing community collaborations may assist other communities, stakeholders and policymakers in teen pregnancy prevention efforts elsewhere. Specifically, this presentation will profile: (a) guidelines developed for defining and structuring inter-agency collaboratives; (b)Statewide training assessment data, resources and tools developed in support of teen pregnancy prevention collaborative work in CCG commmunities; (c) recommendations for strengthening the work of inter-agency collaboratives.
Learning Objectives: The participant will be able to: 1. Identify at least four key elements for defining and structuring an inter-agency teen pregnancy prevention collaborative 2. Identify at least four mechanisms to support the work of teen pregnancy prevention collaboration 3. List 3 key areas that collaboratives need to address to ensure community support for their shared mission
Keywords: Collaboration, Adolescent Health
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.