Houston Collaborative for Youth in Care Research/iCHAMPSS 2.0

UTHealth leads the research arm of the Houston Collaborative for Youth in Care. This work includes developing sexual health education for youth in foster care and adults that work with them, updating iCHAMPSS, and reviewing sex-ed programs for TEKS alignment.

https://sph.uth.edu/research/centers/chppr/ichampss/ 

After the measure is developed, it will be further tested in health clinics for validity and reliability and then in schools delivering a nutrition program to The Houston Collaborative for Youth in Care (CLYC), led by Texas Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, is funded by Houston Endowment. Comprised of seven partnering organizations with expertise in the child welfare system and adolescent sexual reproductive health, CLYC focuses on teen pregnancy prevention among youth with child welfare system experience and adolescents statewide. The collaborative has three arms: research and outreach, advocacy, and workforce development. UTHealth adolescent health researchers lead the Research and Outreach Workgroup.

Overall, CLYC’s goals are to:

1. Understand the complex issue of teen pregnancy among Houston youth in care
2. Identify best practices to prevent unintended pregnancy and provide support to young parents
3. Develop strategies to strengthen existing programs for youth and caregivers with lived experience
4. Provide workforce development opportunities for current and former youth in care
5. Develop a long-term advocacy strategy to improve related statewide policies and systems.

In 2019, as part of the Research and Outreach Workgroup, UTHealth was charged with doing a needs and assets assessment using Intervention Mapping (a planning framework to construct programs based on evidence and theory). The assessment included targeted literature reviews for sexual reproductive health education among youth in care, and qualitative interviews with young adults formerly in care and adults who work with them. It also involved a review of sexual health programs that could be used with the target population if found to be evidence-based, medically accurate, and trauma-informed.

Currently, UTHealth is developing a digital resource tool kit for pregnant and parenting youth in care, updating Choosing and Maintaining Effective Programs for Sex Education in Schools (iCHAMPSS), and reviewing existing evidence-based programs for new Texas Sexual Health TEKS alignment.