State and local health departments collaborate to prevent teen pregnancy in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania was selected as one of nine teams to participate in a Teen Pregnancy Prevention Roundtable and Training hosted by CityMatCH and the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs. Pennsylvania's team included state, local, and community representatives from the Pennsylvania Department of Health (Department), the Allentown Health Bureau, and the Pennsylvania Coalition to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (PCPTP), respectively. The Department collaborates with ten County/Municipal Health Departments to provide direct health services and education in the areas of Maternal and Infant Health, Child Health, and Children with Special Health Care Needs. In addition, the Department has an established relationship with the PCPTP. Based on these existing relationships, putting together a team for the Roundtable was easy, however, an explicit state:local collaboration had not been created before to address this public health issue. While at the training the team worked on creating an action plan for the implementation of a science-based teen pregnancy prevention program at the community level. Challenges for implementation included identifying funding and creating a program plan with a needs assessment and logic model to determine which science-based approach would be most appropriate for the target population. To address these challenges, the Department committed to provide up to $75,000 for a program in the city of Allentown, and PCPTP committed to assisting the Allentown Health Bureau with the program plan. Details on how the collaboration is working to date, how the barriers were overcome, and plans for future collaboration will be shared.