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Policymakers frequently assume that when an intervention was found effective in one setting, the same results can be repeated elsewhere. However, the history of social programs is replete with examples of programs that, while effective in one location, simply failed to work elsewhere. The federal government has a poor record of replicating effective social programs.
A more recent example is the federal government’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) grants, created by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2010. TPP grants are administered by the Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The OAH “invests in the implementation of evidence-based TPP programs, and provides funding to develop and evaluate new and innovative approaches to prevent teen pregnancy.”