Strategies

Provide pregnant or parenting teens with services based upon their needs (e.g., counseling, connections to health care or social services, academic support, etc.) in school or community settings

Delay school start times for middle and high schools to better align with adolescent sleep-wake cycles; often until after 8:30 or 9:00 a.m.

Support initiatives that combine multiple components such as education, skills building, and contraceptive promotion to reduce pregnancy among youth

Require employers in an affected jurisdiction to provide paid time off for employees to use when ill or injured

Support quality improvement efforts in early child care and preschool via financial incentives, standards, processes to monitor standards and ensure compliance, etc.

Create a school culture of high behavioral and academic expectations, with intense tutoring, increased teacher performance feedback, lengthened instruction time, and health care services

Promote abstinence from sexual activity, generally only with mention of condoms and birth control to highlight failure rates

Provide reproductive health care services such as counseling, contraception, and testing in middle and high school-based health centers

Teach students personal and social skills to avoid tobacco use; led by teachers, health educators, or students in elementary schools, middle schools, or high schools

Help students process trauma exposure and develop coping skills through individual or small group counseling with mental health professionals or school staff with trauma-specific training