By Jane Kay, Reveal / July 14, 2017
Above: Guttmacher Institute illustration for How Dismantling the ACA’s Marketplace Coverage Would Impact Sexual and Reproductive Health
dministration has quietly axed $213.6 million in teen pregnancy prevention programs and research at more than 80 institutions around the country, including Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins University.
The decision by the US Department of Health and Human Services will end five-year grants awarded by the Obama administration that were designed to find scientifically valid ways to help teenagers make healthy decisions that avoid unwanted pregnancies.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and other top Trump appointees are outspoken opponents of federal funding for birth control, advocating abstinence rather than contraceptives to control teen pregnancies.
Among the programs that lost their funding: the Choctaw Nation's efforts to combat teen pregnancy in Oklahoma, Johns Hopkins' work with adolescent Apaches in Arizona, the University of Texas' guidance for youth in foster care, the Chicago Department of Public Health's counseling and testing for sexually transmitted infections and the University of Southern California’s workshops for teaching parents how to talk to middle school kids about delaying sexual activity.
tion of two years of funding for the five-year projects shocked the professors and community health officials around the country who run them.
h officials say cutting off money midway through multiyear research projects is highly unusual and wasteful because it means there can be no scientifically valid findings. The researchers will not have the funds to analyze data they have spent the past two years collecting or incorporate their findings into assistance for teens and their families.
"We are just reeling. We’re not sure how we’ll adapt," said Jennifer Hettema, an associate research professor at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, which was finding ways to help doctors talk to Native American and Latino teens about avoiding pregnancy.
More than a quarter of US girls become pregnant by 20. The teen birth rate has continually declined over the past 20 years, but it remains high compared with other industrialized nations, particularly among poor and minority girls.
rump administration, the Department of Health and Human Services' Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program had two strikes against it: Former President Barack Obama started it, and social conservatives don’t want to give teens access to birth control.
projects were awarded five-year grants in 2015. But last week, they received annual grant award letters from the Office of Adolescent Health, which were obtained by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Included was this sentence: “This award also shortens the project period to end June 30, 2018, at the end of this budget year.” In years past, the award letters said the project period would end June 30, 2020.
In addition, a $2.9 million annual grant split among Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, the University of Michigan, the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute, EngenderHealth in New York and Youth Catalytics in Vermont was eliminated immediately.
These five groups were unfunded after one year of their five-year projects. They were responsible for providing resources, such as training for recruiting and communication, to the other grant holders. The five groups received letters saying that the cut was due to changing program priorities and that the projects were no longer in the federal government’s best interest.
The elimination of funding was done outside the traditional federal budget process. Congress has begun negotiations on the spending bill, and on Wednesday, an appropriations subcommittee cut money for teen pregnancy prevention.
Pat Paluzzi of the Healthy Teen Network in Baltimore said the axing of the program, including her project to develop an app to answer teen girls’ health questions, is “part and parcel of the shift to abstinence-only dollars.”
“They don’t like to deal with the sexual reproductive health of teens,” Paluzzi said. “They frame it in this country as moral issues. Public health issues shouldn’t be political issues.”
Several grantees were told by officials at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Adolescent Health that the decision to eliminate funding came from the office of the assistant secretary for health. Last month, President Donald Trump appointed a new chief of staff there, Valerie Huber, who favors abstinence as the solution to teen pregnancy.
The office of the assistant secretary for health on Thursday confirmed eliminating the final two years of funding for the 81 programs but declined to answer questions.
"All of these grantees were given a project end date of June 30, 2018, allowing the grantees an opportunity to adjust their program and plan for an orderly close out," a Health and Human Services Department spokesman said.
The funded programs were exclusively involved in preventing youth pregnancies; no abortion counseling was provided.
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