Trump administration cancels millions of dollars in teen pregnancy prevention grants

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The Trump administration has terminated millions of dollars in teen pregnancy prevention grants that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said were no longer aligned with the agency’s priorities.

HHS cut 53 grants worth about $67 million two years before they were set to expire. The cuts hit university, community and public health grantees across more than two dozen states.

According to a list seen by The Hill, most of the grants were terminated because HHS said they normalized or promoted sexual activity for minors.

The Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program, part of the HHS Office of Population Affairs, is a national, evidence-based program that funds organizations to help youth make healthy decisions that reduce sexual risk behavior, decrease sexually transmitted infections and unintended teen pregnancy.

An HHS official confirmed that the reclaimed funds will be redirected into two new grant opportunities that HHS promoted last week.

One grant, titled “Replicating Effective Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs,” will award a total of $63.4 million to 54 grantees.

According to a description, the purpose of the new program is “to support replication of effective programs that provide adolescents with medically accurate, age-appropriate education and counseling that help them understand their bodies, clarify reproductive life goals, and make informed health decisions.”

The other funding opportunity seeks to identify effective interventions “focused on body literacy and ensuring transparency and protection of parental rights for future replication by adolescent health practitioners and youth-serving professionals.”

It will provide approximately $8.3 million for nine grant awards.

Both opportunities tell applicants that they must pass an alignment review process to ensure they meet agency priorities.

Ayana Bradshaw, president and CEO of AccessMatters in Philadelphia, said her organization received a notice cancelling its $1.2 million grant on June 26, effective immediately.

Bradshaw said the HHS letter told the organization it was “normalizing adolescent sexual activity that are not age appropriate as they contain overly sexually explicit or pornographic content that is not necessary to achieve the TPP program’s statutory mission.”

Bradshaw said HHS specifically cited the “Be Proud, Be Responsible” curriculum, which is designed to provide adolescents with the knowledge, motivation and skills to change their behaviors in ways that will reduce their risk of contracting HIV.

Having the funding canceled is “extremely detrimental to the Philadelphia youth who deserve to be able to receive evidence-based information,” Bradshaw said.

“There’s no way of doing this programming without these dollars … we were in fact following what was required of us, and we are saddened by the impact that this is going to have on young people,” she said.

The organization provides free sexual and reproductive health programs to more than 1,100 teens between the ages of 13 and 19. The program provides information, education and referrals for healthcare as needed.

This isn’t the first time TPP program recipients have faced uncertainty under the current Trump administration. Last year, HHS told recipients that they needed to align with the administration’s sexual and reproductive health priorities.

HHS said grant recipients must ensure the curricula in their teen pregnancy programs “reflect the immutable biological reality of sex, not radical gender ideology, and may not promote anti-American ideologies such as discriminatory equity ideology.”

A federal judge blocked the directive following lawsuits from Planned Parenthood affiliates in California, Iowa and New York.

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