Announcement of Availability of Funds for Providing Capacity Building Assistance to Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Grantees | AH TPS 16 001

Opportunity Information: Apply for AH TPS 16 001

This funding opportunity, titled "Announcement of Availability of Funds for Providing Capacity Building Assistance to Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Grantees" (Funding Opportunity Number AH-TPS-16-001), is a discretionary federal health grant that uses the cooperative agreement funding instrument. Its central purpose is to strengthen the on-the-ground performance of organizations already funded by OAH to run Teen Pregnancy Prevention work by providing them with targeted capacity building assistance (CBA). In this context, CBA means helping grantees build practical knowledge and skills so they can implement teen pregnancy prevention programs well, evaluate them appropriately, and sustain them over time. The opportunity is designed around the reality that OAH’s TPP portfolio includes both replication of evidence-based programs (Tier 1, 58 grantees) and development and evaluation of innovative approaches (Tier 2, 26 grantees), which means grantees often face different challenges and need different kinds of support.

The FOA will fund five national CBA providers, with each provider specializing in one of five priority areas. Applicants must choose a single priority area to address; OAH will not fund more than one award per priority area. Across the five-year project period, these national providers are expected to work in a coordinated way with one another and with OAH to (1) assess the CBA needs of all OAH-funded TPP grantees, (2) develop an annual, coordinated CBA plan, (3) deliver CBA using approaches that match what grantees actually need, (4) evaluate the assistance delivered and continuously improve it based on feedback and results, and (5) disseminate resources and products that come out of the CBA work (such as tools, lessons learned, and other usable materials). A key feature of the model is that every TPP grantee should receive some level of support from each national CBA provider every year, but the intensity and format are expected to vary widely depending on the grantee’s situation.

The five priority areas are structured to cover the full lifecycle of program success, from day-to-day delivery to long-term sustainability and public communication. The first area, Program Implementation, focuses on the nuts and bolts of planning and delivering prevention programming with quality. That includes using implementation science frameworks, maintaining fidelity to evidence-based or evidence-informed models, making appropriate adaptations, recruiting and retaining youth and families, and ensuring programs reach vulnerable populations such as youth in foster care or other out-of-home settings, youth in juvenile detention, runaway and homeless youth, and expectant or parenting teens. It also emphasizes using data for decision-making and continuous improvement, which is often essential for both demonstrating impact and troubleshooting implementation challenges.

The second area, Community Mobilization and Sustainability, centers on building the community conditions that allow TPP work to last beyond a single funding cycle. This includes strategies for mobilizing local support, meaningfully engaging a Community Advisory Group and a Youth Leadership Council, and developing a sustainability plan aligned with OAH’s Sustainability Framework. That framework highlights eight factors: Create an Action Plan, Assess the Environment, Be Adaptable, Secure Community Support, Integrate Programs and Services, Build a Team of Leaders, Create Strategic Partnerships, and Secure Diverse Financial Opportunities. The expectation is that providers help grantees move from operating a grant-funded program to embedding prevention work into community systems, partnerships, and diversified funding streams.

The third area, Implementing Programs in a Safe and Supportive Environment for Youth and Their Families, addresses the conditions under which programming is delivered and whether those conditions are welcoming, inclusive, and effective. It includes creating safe spaces for youth, ensuring programming is culturally and linguistically appropriate, and ensuring that services are inclusive and affirming of LGBTQ youth. It also specifically calls for trauma-informed approaches, recognizing that many young people may have experienced adversity that affects engagement and outcomes, and it emphasizes Positive Youth Development practices so staff interactions promote strengths, agency, and healthy decision-making rather than relying only on risk-focused messaging.

The fourth area, Establishing and Maintaining Linkages and Referrals to Youth-Friendly Health Care Services, focuses on connecting prevention programming to practical access to health services. This includes identifying and recruiting organizations that offer youth-friendly care, assessing whether those services are accessible and appropriate for adolescents, and building workable referral systems. Concrete deliverables in this area can include referral protocols, a referral guide that can be shared with participants, staff training on how to make referrals effectively and confidentially, and methods for tracking and assessing what happens after referrals are made (for example, whether youth can access services and whether linkages are functioning as intended).

The fifth area, Communication and Dissemination, is designed to help grantees share their work effectively with stakeholders and the broader field. This includes developing strategic dissemination and communications plans, identifying priority audiences (such as parents, schools, community leaders, funders, health partners, and policymakers), and tailoring messages and products to match stakeholder preferences. It also includes documenting and sharing success stories, packaging programs so they are "implementation-ready" for others, publishing and presenting results and lessons learned, and managing controversy effectively, which can be especially relevant in adolescent sexual health programming.

The FOA expects national CBA providers to deliver assistance at three levels of intensity. Low-intensity support is meant for all or most grantees and is typically short-term and broadly usable, such as webinars, toolkits, templates, virtual learning sessions, or quick-turn guidance documents. Medium-intensity support is more targeted and may serve a subset of grantees with a shared need, often through focused training series, cohort-based learning, or topic-specific technical assistance. High-intensity support is individualized and tailored to a small number of grantees, delivered over time through repeated interactions such as coaching, ongoing consultation, or hands-on problem solving around complex implementation or systems challenges.

Coordination is a major operational requirement. While all five providers must collaborate with each other and with OAH, the awardee in the Program Implementation priority area is designated as the lead national CBA provider and is responsible for ensuring coordination across the five funded organizations. Because of those added leadership responsibilities, the program implementation provider may request up to an additional $75,000. Overall, OAH anticipates making five awards total, with an award ceiling of $600,000 per award, and the original closing date listed for applications was April 8, 2016.

Eligibility is broad and includes many types of public and private entities capable of delivering national-level training and technical assistance. Eligible applicants include nonprofits (with or without 501(c)(3) status, other than institutions of higher education), for-profit organizations (other than small businesses), small/minority/women-owned businesses, universities and colleges, research institutions, hospitals, community-based and faith-based organizations, federally or state recognized American Indian/Alaska Native tribal governments and tribally designated organizations, Alaska Native health corporations, Urban Indian health organizations, Tribal Epidemiology Centers, and state and local governments and their bona fide agents, including U.S. territories and affiliated jurisdictions listed in the announcement. The sponsoring agency is the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, with the program tied to CFDA 93.297.

• The Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Announcement of Availability of Funds for Providing Capacity Building Assistance to Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Grantees" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.297.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2016-01-05.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2016-04-08. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $600,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 5 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

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