Training Teens and Transforming School Culture Through Comprehensive Sex Education: An Implementation Study of Teen PEP

Curriculum-based sexuality-education programs guide classroom instruction and often incorporate activity-based learning. To complement and build on one such model, two New Jersey-based organizations, HiTOPS and the Center for Supportive Schools (CSS), focused on developing youth leaders to change school cultures and sustain the effects of the classroom curriculum. They developed Teen PEP, a peer-led model to prevent teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which they have been implementing in New Jersey high schools since 1995 and more recently in North Carolina.