The Cost of Implementing a Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program in High School Health Classes
OPRE Report #2019-33
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Associated Project
Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP)
Prepared for:
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families
Clients
Key Findings
- The average cost per student was $113, an amount at the lower end of the range for federally funded teen pregnancy prevention programs.
- Personnel costs accounted for the largest share (about three-quarters) of the total annual cost to the local health departments.
- If the local health departments were responsible for paying for the school classrooms and teachers, the program would have cost $150 per student.
When policymakers and practitioners are considering a new program, cost is typically one of their key concerns. This brief provides information on the cost of implementing a teen pregnancy prevention program in school as part of a health class for high school students. The information comes from an evaluation of an adapted version of the Reducing the Risk teen pregnancy prevention curriculum, which Mathematica conducted for the Administration for Children and Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As part of the evaluation, trained health educators from two local health departments in Kentucky delivered an adapted eight-hour version of the Reducing the Risk curriculum in rural Kentucky high schools as part of a mandatory health class for primarily 9th- and 10th-grade students. Mathematica partnered with these health departments to collect information on program cost, with the goal of understanding the resources the health departments required to provide the program and how the cost of this program compares to other the federally funded teen pregnancy prevention programs.
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