Policy & Practice October 2016

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October 2016 Policy&Practice 41
10. Future outlook is an
effective birth control
Long-term relationships with
trusted, caring adults are essential
(see item 3 above) to guide youth and
young adults through keystone experi-
ences that shape and anchor future
outlook so that children are born at
the appropriate time for healthy family
formation. Through their development
and completion of milestones, youth
and young adults build and acquire the
health, financial independence, and
social capital they will use, not only
in their adult lives, but will pass on to
their children.
11. Don’t forget the males
It is important to counteract the
societal bias to primarily target
females in pregnancy prevention
strategies. Interventions and outreach
should actively engage both males and
females.
12. Parenting youth need
specialized support
Being young parents can be chal-
lenging, as they are developing as
young people while also developing
their role as parents (see http://
expectant-parenting-youth-in-foster-
care). For this we implemented
Pregnant and Parenting Planning
Conferences, a voluntary, specialized
conference to assist expectant and
parenting youth and young adults
(mothers, fathers—custodial and non-
custodial) with planning for healthy
pregnancy and parenting outcomes,
identifying appropriate resources
and services, and preparing for a suc-
cessful transition to independence.
Our neighbor and fellow Institute
peer, Los Angeles County, developed
this model and provided us with
training and technical assistance to
implement it. Developing financial
literacy and management, and par-
ticipating in early childhood in-home
visitation are key to strengthening the
young family.
13. Outcome evaluation
is important
Telling your story—your successes,
what you’ve learned—is important
for continuous quality improvement,
to build confidence among diverse
stakeholders, to fortify continuation
and growth for these efforts, and to
contribute to the field to advance larger
scale outcomes and systems change. It
is also complex and requires expertise.
We find ourselves still trying to figure
out the best approach. How do we:
capture data in the simplest manner,
navigate across data systems, measure
change, analyze the data, present the
data and findings, and share our story.
14. Ego says, “Once
everything falls into place,
I’ll feel peace.” Spirit says,
“Find your peace, and then
everything will fall into
place.”
—Marianne Williamson
Keep focused and celebrate the
abundance of successes along the way,
including the lessons learned. Advance
gradually but surely.
The progress Orange County is
making to reduce teen pregnancy
and sexually transmitted infection is
readily apparent from the descriptions
above. Their experience in an extended
peer-to-peer learning setting is unique,
though in three ways it mirrors others’
experiences and learning:
1. Strategies to improve outcomes
are generated through both
external scanning and one’s own
critical thinking. These counties
learned about four specific evi-
dence-based strategies to consider
using, and they also learned a
critical thinking path to use on an
ongoing basis to generate other
strategies, in part by reflecting on
the reasons for gaps between a
desired state and a current one. In
Orange County’s case, they added
strategies from their “full picture”
understanding of what their teens
experience, generating ones to
increase availability of “askable
adults,” future planning skills,
engagement of males, and viewing
healthy sexual development as part
of adult-to-adult relationship skills.
2. Dedicated peer champions,
leaders, mentors, staff, and com-
munity partners are built through
investing in ongoing two-way
communication. Each county
saw overcoming their challenges
as daunting to improbable until
they began the process of forming
sponsor groups and improvement
teams involving a broad range of
participants with similar goals and
complementary resources and skills.
Orange County has made huge time
investments in this approach and
from our viewpoint transformed
their image from “too conceptual”
to “expert, trusted partners and
leaders” in their own right.
3. Data and analysis is easy to
back burner … and then you
might get burned. Our primary
lessons learned as designers of
learning and change manage-
ment tools include providing
much more design support to
construct analytical frameworks
that define the data needed to test
and evolve a theory-of-change
that connects desired outcomes,
factors that enable them or get in
their way, and health and human
service programs that will most
Telling your story—your successes, what
you’ve learned—is important for continuous
quality improvement, to build confidence
among diverse stakeholders, to fortify
continuation and growth for these efforts,
and to contribute to the field to advance larger
scale outcomes and systems change.
See Teen Pregnancy on page 42