Child Trends is collaborating with Equimundo and the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) to evaluate the Many Ways of Being (MWB) program. MWB is an eight-session gender-transformative, trauma-informed sexual health program aimed at reducing risky sexual behaviors and preventing unintended teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The program’s goals include shifting unequal gender attitudes and behaviors, as well as providing skills-building training around forming and maintaining healthy relationships and making healthy, informed sexual decisions.
The MWB program was developed by Equimundo—in partnership with the Healthy Teen Network and with feedback from teens—to be evaluated by Child Trends with Black and Latino adolescents ages 15 to 19 in the greater Washington, DC area. The program builds off of the existing Manhood 2.0 program, which demonstrated promising results in a previous pilot evaluation.
Child Trends is conducting a randomized control trial to assess the MWB program’s effects on the incidence of unprotected sex among adolescents and on key mediators (knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and intentions) related to sexual health-promoting behaviors. From Spring 2023 to Fall 2024, LAYC and Child Trends will enroll approximately 700 youth ages 15 to 19 from schools and community centers. These youth will be randomly assigned to receive either MWB (treatment) or a control curriculum focused on job readiness. Using youth survey data from baseline, post-intervention, and 9-12 months after program completion—as well as implementation data and youth focus groups—the evaluation will assess program fidelity, youth perceptions of the program, and impacts on sexual health outcomes.
Presentation: Embedding Equity in Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation
These slides were presented at the 2022 Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (APP) Grantee Conference from June 28-30, 2022. The presentation highlights the value of equitable implementation and evaluation planning, along with examples of how the MWB project team has worked to embed equity into all aspects of this research project, including intervention design and implementation and research practices.
These slides were presented by Equimundo, the Latin American Teen Center (LAYC), and Healthy Teen Network (HTN) at the 2022 HTN Conference on October 18, 2022. The presentation describes the development of the Many Ways of Being curriculum, a gender-transformative and gender-inclusive program based off two single-gender curricula; highlights several questions the presenters had grappled with, including how to balance inclusivity while acknowledging the gender binary and the structures that limit gender expression; and shares updates made to the curriculum to better reflect the lived experiences of gender-diverse youth and the challenges they encounter.
This poster was designed by Equimundo and presented at the 2022 International Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Summit on December 6, 2022. The content describes the guiding principles and formative research that informed the hybrid approach of the Many Ways of Being curriculum, including the development and design of the in-person curriculum and the accompanying digital engagement component. The poster also highlights the intended short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes of the intervention.
This poster was presented at the 2023 APP Grantee Conference from May 23-25, 2023. The poster highlights how Many Ways of Being takes an asset-based approach—both in the curriculum teachings and the evaluation outcomes—and describes the behavioral and non-behavioral outcomes that will measure the program’s impact. Finally, this poster presents preliminary findings from a pilot study of the Many Ways of Being program that took place during the Fall of 2022.
Brief: Equity-focused strategies in a federally funded evaluation of a sexual health program
This brief, written by Child Trends, Equimundo, and LAYC, shares strategies that federally funded programs can use in their planning year to embed equity-focused practices and principles into program design, implementation, and evaluation.
Presentation: Ensuring meaningful and inclusive youth voice and agency in sex ed programs
These slides were presented by LAYC, Equimundo, and HTN at the 2023 HTN Conference from October 2-4, 2023. The presentation describes the intentional processes the team used to center youth in the design and implementation of the MWB program.
Principal investigator: Jennifer Manlove | jmanlove@childtrends.org
Project manager: Samantha Ciaravino | sciaravino@childtrends.org
Federal program officer: Katherine Godesky l Katherine.godesky@acf.hhs.gov
This webpage was made possible by Grant Number 90AP2693 from the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. Its contents are solely the responsibility of Child Trends and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.
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