Since 2011, the Tulsa Health Department’s Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) has used an evidence-based, medically-accurate approach to prevent teen pregnancy and STDs, including HIV. PREP provides Tulsa County youth with the education and information necessary to make healthy choices and to positively change their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs when it comes to sexual activity and risky behaviors.
PREP serves youth in Tulsa County school districts and youth-serving organizations in urban, suburban and rural parts of the county. Target populations include at-risk African American, Native American and Hispanic youth 10-19 years of age in middle, high and alternative schools throughout Tulsa County. Targeted areas include zip codes with the highest teen birth rates. PREP also targets youth who are homeless, in foster care, live in rural areas as well as expectant and parenting youth.
Having provided medically-accurate teen pregnancy prevention education to more than 18,000 Tulsa teens in the last 10 years, PREP and the Tulsa Health Department have made an investment in the health and well-being of Tulsa’s adolescent population. Young people who receive comprehensive sexuality education are able to make smarter decisions about things like school, relationships and being involved in their communities. In short, they can see and plan for a brighter and more meaningful future, which contributes to the overall health of Tulsa County.
PREP has always had a culture of creativity, innovation and collaboration. Traditionally, PREP provides in-person adolescent sexual health programming to several thousand Tulsa County youth each year. With ten years of experience, the team routinely exceeds grant expectations and is a well-oiled machine.
The COVID-19 pandemic required us to lean into this culture and ask ourselves, “how might we re-imagine our programming and delivery so as to continue serving youth?” The answer to this question laid in intensive collaboration with school and community partners. Collectively we worked to adapt our evidence-based curricula to a live, distance learning environment. We completed formal curriculum training from Cardea, the developer of the Positive Prevention PLUS curriculum. We embraced online platforms like Zoom, Poll Everywhere and Google Jamboard and taught ourselves how to use them to re-create the highly interactive nature of our in-person teaching style. We shifted our data collection tools from paper to Survey Monkey so students could complete them electronically. We learned new trauma-responsiveness skills to meet the mental health needs of students and teachers. We practiced on Zoom for hours until we felt proficient. We readied ourselves for the 2020-21 school year with a mixture of anticipation and anxiety.
Ultimately, the school year didn’t go as planned due to distance learning challenges and our team’s continued emergency response assignments. But the experience of creating, innovating, and collaborating strengthened PREP. It made us more resilient, more adaptable and more committed to identifying the best ways to serve Tulsa County youth.
Community Partner Testimonial
From Jennifer Briggs, LMSW - Program Director at Amplify:
Amplify collaborates closely with THD’s PREP Program and Youth Services of Tulsa to ensure the district-wide implementation of evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs in Tulsa Public Schools (TPS). During the 2020-21 school year, TPS was the only school district in the state to offer uninterrupted implementation district-wide because of the COVID-19 pandemic. THD PREP played a critical role in the collective’s pivot to a virtual model for implementation, which involved adapting every piece of the implementation process to accommodate TPS’s remote learning schedules. TPS students would not have received programming during the 2020-21 school year without the PREP team's collaboration, intentionality, expertise, and tenacity. One site coordinator for a high school served by THD in the fall of 2020 provided the following feedback in their end of implementation survey:
“This is a great program. Staff and educators are pleasant and professional, very good at what they do. We are glad that the students were able to have this opportunity, even during virtual learning. Everyone involved did their best to facilitate this learning opportunity in spite of the obstacles.”
When many programs around the country were unable to provide educational opportunities to students, THD PREP played a vital role in making sure TPS students still had access to high-quality sexual health and TPP programs. Additionally, in the Summer of 2021, THD PREP staff played a vital role in training the collective. The PREP team worked with Amplify to implement training for three evidence-based curricula, effectively preparing the collective for the start of the 2021-22 school year.
Amplify is proud to collaborate with THD’s PREP program to bring evidence-based sexual health education programs to young people in Tulsa. We are particularly grateful for their work over the 2020-21 school year and their commitment to serving young people even when it is exceptionally difficult.
By the Numbers
- 4 Tulsa County schools were provided programming by PREP
- 769 student contacts were initiated in middle and high schools
- 369 participated in Positive Prevention PLUS High School