Recently more than $150 million was doled out by the federal Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) to fund teen pregnancy programs, but it appears that only $1 million went to organizations with a demonstrated history of serving Hispanic youth – the minority with the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country.
Given that teen pregnancy is at a crisis level among Latinas, the National Alliance for Hispanic Families has been proactive in its pursuit of educating decision makers about the need for funding to serve Hispanic teens. We have engaged our leaders from across the country, arranging meetings and presentations with White House officials and congressional offices. We’ve supported outreach of the OAH and other interested national organizations. Finally, we have addressed the concern that there are too few Latino-focused grant applications by working hand-in-hand with community orgnizations throughout the country to help them submit proposals for this round of OAH grants. When the grant awards were announced, we found very little evidence of our efforts: only two of 158 grantees are Hispanic focused organizations with a demonstrated history of serving Hispanic communities.
hispanic_girl_2According to the Campaign for Teenage Pregnancy, 52 percent of Latina teens will become pregnant at least once before they turn 20. In comparison, only 19% of non-Hispanic white teen girls under the age of 20 become pregnant. In other words, at present, Latina teens are more likely than not to become pregnant. This fact does not seem to square with the negligible funding recently awarded to programs with a demonstrated history of working successfully with Hispanics
With the highest birth rates of any youth population in the United States, and the number of Hispanics in this country rising steadily, this disparity in funding is puzzling. We’re amazed that OAH awarded grants to many organizations that have historically received funding all while teen pregnancy rates have continued to escalate among Hispanics. Virtually none of the groups that received grant awards are those that low-income youth and families trust or seek out.
Take California, for example, the state with the largest Hispanic population. In a series of phone inquiries, NAHF leaders were told state officials do not track the applicability or success of teen pregnancy programs among Latinas. But in this recent round of awards, the California Department of Public Health alone received $6.5 million. To us, it’s unconscionable that leaders of the state with the largest number of Hispanics are unaware of how effectively they service this high-risk population while receiving additional money that will likely be used for similar programming. There is no evidence that demonstrates these new grantees’ success in intervening within the population that has the greatest need.
While the National Alliance for Hispanic Families is comprised of many types of organizations who share an interest in the Hispanic community, foundational to our work are Hispanic serving, community-based organizations. To this end, NAHF leadership is deliberating the appropriate response to this recent teen pregnancy announcement. Is it more of the same? What more can we do? What do we need to do differently? What can we do to transfer concerns that range from discouragement and outrage to those that will provide long-term opportunity and positive results for our Hispanic community?
(photo: parentconnect.com)