Research

Between fiscal years 2005-2007, the Office of Population Affairs (OPA) made a series of research awards through two standing announcements–one for Title X Service Delivery Improvement research and one for Title XX Adolescent Family Life research. These announcements invited and funded research proposals, on an annual basis, for three years. They have recently expired and the OPA is currently developing new announcements for each program. These new announcements will be posted on the Grants and Funding page of the OPA web site when they are published in the Federal Register.

For more information, please download the standing announcements for:

Title X Service Delivery Improvement research [txt] [pdf]
Title XX Adolescent Family Life research [txt] [pdf]

Family Planning

Twelve research awards were made through the Title X Service Delivery Improvement research standing announcement. The goal of this announcement was to support applied research to generate knowledge that will enable the program to improve the delivery of reproductive health services to women and men who need them. To that end, general areas of interest identified in the announcement were: 1) quality of care, including effectiveness, efficiency, timeliness and equity of family planning services; 2) reproductive health care of adolescents; 3) reproductive health care of males; 4) family planning services to couples; 5) organizational approaches to integrated services; 6) translating research into practice; 7) increasing costs and their impact; and 8) effectiveness of Title X information and education activities. Of the twelve awards made, three projects are examining various aspects of quality of family planning service delivery, three are focusing on males, three are focusing on couples, two on organizational approaches to integrated services, and one on adolescents.

In addition to the Service Delivery Improvement research standing announcement, family planning research is currently being conducted through cooperative agreements with three grantees. The purposes of these cooperative agreements are: 1) to analyze data on family planning needs and services over time using well-established formulas and data bases; 2) develop tools to assess and improve the quality of care in family planning clinics based on clinic data collection by a network of service providers; and 3) analyze an array of national survey data sets to better understand the determinants of unintended pregnancy and childbearing.

Adolescent Family Life

Nine research awards were made through the Title XX Adolescent Family Life research standing announcement. The goals of this announcement were to support applied research to generate knowledge that will enable the program to prevent adolescent premarital sexual activity and pregnancy (prevention) and to provide supportive services for pregnant and parenting teens to ameliorate the adverse effects associated with adolescent pregnancy and parenting (care). Thus, the general areas of interest identified in the announcement were: 1) influences on adolescent premarital sexual behavior; 2) parent involvement and communication; 3) youth development; 4)pro-social risk behaviors; 5) adoption; 6) adolescent parents; and 7) long term impact of adolescent childbearing on family structures. Of the nine awards made, four addressed prevention issues (1-4), four addressed care issues (5-7), and one addressed both.