Montefiore Health System in New York City has announced a three-year, $3 million grant from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation in support of a new teen pregnancy prevention initiative in the Bronx, which has some of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation.

The Montefiore School Health Program (MSHP), the largest such program in the country, provides comprehensive medical, dental, mental, and community health services to forty thousand elementary, middle, and high school students at twenty-three campuses in the Bronx. The new initiative will build on the MSHP model, which has achieved an almost 50 percent reduction in positive pregnancy test rates at one high school campus compared to students who do not have access to a health clinic in their school.

The program, which will serve approximately twenty-two thousand students in grades 9-12 in the most underserved neighborhoods in the borough, will bolster existing efforts to provide comprehensive reproductive health services to teens, including screening and treatment of sexually transmitted infections and family planning services to the entire student population, with additional efforts aimed at engaging teens considered most at risk. The grant also will support community health organizers who use school-wide communications strategies, including events, posters, and informational tables, to drive teen awareness of reproductive health issues; facilitate the recruitment of youth support workers to identify students who underutilize MSHP services and work with them to take control of their health; and underwrite research that enables MSHP leadership to evaluate the initiative and, if it proves to be effective, set the stage for replication of the model at the city, state, and national levels.

"We are pleased to join our longtime partner, Montefiore Health System, in an intensive effort to address unintended teenage pregnancy in the Bronx," said Jerome Foundation president Christina McInerney. "A fundamental component of the program will be a rigorous analysis of its results. If the results are positive, we hope that the Montefiore/Greene Foundation Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative will serve as a prototype for similar programs across the country. The Jerome L. Greene Foundation has supported efforts in reproductive healthcare for many years, and this new grant strengthens both our and Montefiore’s mission to build a better future for today’s youth."