Forward Together

A five-year road map for the Central Oklahoma Teen Pregnancy Prevention Collaboration

An honestly staff member talking during a meeting while holding her phone

Common Agenda:

Together, honestly and the Collaboration will create an environment that supports the sexual health of youth. This will include fostering the conditions that reduce teen birth rates, decrease sexually transmitted infection (STI) incidence among young people, and expand access to comprehensive, medically accurate, age-appropriate education and resources for youth and their caregivers.

To read the full Forward Together strategic plan, click below.

View Full Plan

Youth Sexual Health in
Oklahoma City

Teen Birth Rate

The teen birth rate has dropped by 27.3% from 2019 to 2023 — surpassing the goal of a 25% reduction set in the Collaboration’s previous strategic plan, Momentum Matters. The teen birth rate has long been an important measurement tool to understand youth sexual health and wellness.

Teen pregnancy impacts the entire community, but data reveals significant disparities in birth rates among marginalized populations. Black, multiracial, and Hispanic communities experience higher teen birth rates than other racial and ethnic groups due in no small part to historical and systemic injustices.

(Trends in Teen Pregnancy and Childbearing. Office of Population Affairs (OASH). Accessed December 16, 2024. https://opa.hhs.gov/adolescent-health/adolescent-sexual-and-reproductive-health/trends-teen-pregnancy-and-childbearing)

Public Health Impacts

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed schools and health care delivery, making fundamental changes to how people receive information and care, including impacting educators’ opportunities to engage with young Oklahomans and provide them with the tools necessary to improve their overall health and well-being.

Additionally, over the last five years, school boards and parents have placed greater scrutiny on educators and their curricula. In response, the Oklahoma legislature introduced 12 bills that address parental rights concerns regarding curricula, and three specifically on sex education curricula. In 2023, providers in the state lost access to the Title X family planning program, impacting their ability to deliver evidence-based, comprehensive care to people of all ages.

Collective Impact

The honestly team and our Collaboration partners recognize that Collective Impact has more power to enact lasting, impactful change than any organization working alone, and that this impact begins with a common agenda to serve as a shared north star.

Role of the Backbone:

The backbone’s role is to provide structural support to the members. The backbone staff facilitates, coordinates, and project manages the common agenda.

Examples of honestly’s responsibilities as the backbone organization for our Collaboration include facilitating meetings and training opportunities, convening Collaboration members and partners, advocating for policy changes to create a safer environment for sex educators to deliver their curricula, and providing targeted and iterative support to Collaboration members on an as-needed basis.

Role of the Collaboration:

Collaboration members carry out the critical work to further the initiative’s goal of reaching young people, their caregivers, and the wider community to educate and engage them in the service of keeping youth healthy and well.

Members further their organizations’ individual impact by engaging with the Collaboration to innovate, reinforce, and inform the group goals and collective approaches.

You can learn more on Collective Impact here.

Levers of Change

This plan provides strategic direction for the next phase of the Collaboration’s work, organized around levers of change that the Collaboration can use to create impact and drive the common agenda forward. Through the strategic planning listening sessions and survey, Collaboration members and partners provided clear guidance on what they need to carry out the Common Agenda.

This guidance was translated into seven strategic levers of change: Funding, Data and Metrics, Collaboration Communication, Youth Engagement and Education, Caregiver and Community Engagement and Education, Policy Change, and Public Communication.

Internal Change Levers

These levers help strengthen the bonds of Collaboration members and the backbone organization, and strengthen the collective power of our organizations.

Funding

Accomplishing the goals of this strategic plan will only be possible with adequate funding for the Collaboration members carrying out the work. Deeper partnerships between members and support from the backbone organization will increase opportunities for shared innovation and opportunities to access funding. Investing in this work as a collective will enable all of us to grow our fundraising capacities and create a stable foundation from which we can advance youth sexual health and wellness in Oklahoma County.

Data/Metrics

Data and metrics are central to tracking and amplifying the success of the Collaboration members and are powerful tools for communicating the continued need for investment in our work. While federal and state data show that comprehensive sex education beneficially impacts the teen birth rate, there is an inevitable lag between intervention and measured outcome. Through work groups, facilitated by the backbone, Collaboration members should align on which member activity and public health metrics they would like to collect to demonstrate our efficacy and impact. Measuring data is key to showing the impact Collaboration members are making for a variety of audiences, including parents, our own tracking, and prospective funders.

Collaboration Communication

The work of the Collaboration will be most successful if members are informed, empowered, and engaged with one another. Communication within the Collaboration needs to be robust, strategic, and efficient to enable the cross-sharing that maximizes the diverse skills, perspectives, and backgrounds at our table.

External Change Levers

Youth Education and Engagement

Engaging and educating youth is the core of our Collaboration’s work, and the dedicated educators and medical providers delivering direct services hold up this pillar. A core function of the Collaboration is to support their needs, while at the same time ensuring that young people have a seat at the table to communicate their preferences and desires.

Caregiver and Community Education and Engagement

Youth need the support of trusted, caring adults and their wider community to thrive. Particularly in the current climate, there is enormous urgency for our Collaboration to establish strong connections with caregivers and community leaders to ensure we are holistically supporting young people and have multiple pathways to reach them.

Public Policy Change

Improving youth health and wellness necessitates coordinated efforts across stakeholders to advance youth-centered public policies and to block harmful policies. Working from the same state-wide playbook on advocacy will create real opportunities to address misinformation and advance policies with positive impacts for young people.

Public Communication

Increasing the awareness and understanding of the work the Collaboration is doing, and growing the public presence of the Collaboration, will go a long way in garnering trust and visibility among key stakeholders. Speaking with one voice as a collective gives our movement more power and helps lift the voices of young people into spaces where they would otherwise be overlooked. The backbone has a unique and important role to play as the entity people most closely associate with the Collaboration in public spaces.

Special Thanks

Thank you to partners and members of the Collaboration who helped develop this plan:

Advisory Council Members, Past and Present
Teen Empower
Variety Care
Amplify: Youth Health Collective
Metriarch: Oklahoma Women’s Public Health Think Tank
Waxman Strategies

Thank you to our Board of Directors during the development of this plan:

Stephanie Mendenhall
John Allen
Erick Worrell
Seth Paxton
Mickie Smith
Heather Healey Whiteside
Lyndi Zavy

This plan and its implementation would not be possible without generous support from the Kirkpatrick Family Fund and the Arnall Family Foundation.

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Join Us

Ready to Move Forward Together With Us?

Complete the Join Our Movement form. This helps us learn more about you, your involvement with the Collaboration, and your interests related to the strategic plan.