The National Evaluation of the Children’s Aid Society Carrera-Model Program to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

May 1, 2001

In spite of recent declines, the United States still has the highest teen pregnancy and teen birth rates of any industrialized nation in the world. Moreover, the search for programs and interventions that might reduce these rates has yielded only a few promising strategies. A growing number of programs can now claim to improve contraceptive use or affect a sexuality-related behavior, such as number of partners or age at first intercourse. However, there are still fewer than ten high quality evaluations of programs that document success in preve nting teen pregnancies or births. This paper reports findings from a three-year random assignment evaluation of the Children’s Aid Society, Carrera-model teen pregnancy prevention program. The program was tested at twelve sites in seven cities.