Efficacy of a Secondary Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program: An Ecological Study Before, during and after Implementation of the Second Chance Club

Abstract

Teen mothers are at increased risk of subsequent adolescent births. Interventions to reduce secondary teen pregnancies are expensive and difficult to evaluate. An ecological evaluation compared change in the repeat teen birth rate in an intervention community in Charleston, South Carolina over time to state birth certificate data to determine the efficacy of a school-based pregnancy prevention program. Evaluation included comparison of birth rates for multigravida teens in the program's school catchment area (intervention zip codes) to selected state and community data before, during and after program implementation. The intervention community demonstrated a decrease in repeat teen births during the intervention period of the program with a rebound after it was discontinued. This trend differed from a 50% linear decrease across these time periods in the state. This low cost evaluation method may be useful for evaluation of teen pregnancy prevention programs with limited resources for program evaluation.