Department of Health & Human Services

Office of the Secretary
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July 18, 2008

Assistant Secretary for Health
Office of Public Health and Science
Office of Population Affairs
Washington, DC 20201

Dear Project Directors:

For the past ten years, the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs (OAPP) has provided technical assistance and training to ensure that Adolescent Family Life (AFL) Care and Prevention have well trained staff. The OAPP’s technical assistance objective is to improve the caliber, professionalism and skills of primarily front-line staff by providing skills-based training. Ultimately, the skills developed through technical assistance training workshops will build each AFL project and their staffs’ capacity to implement the best demonstration programs possible by dealing with the unique and vast needs of program participants and program evaluations.

Every year, the OAPP Project Officers meet to assess how and if we are meeting our training objective. We review grantee feedback, discuss costs with the contractor and develop ideas on how to improve grantee technical assistance and training for the next year. In tandem with ideas for improvement, this year we had to factor in a substantial cut in the AFL budget. Travel and training were directly affected in order to maintain level funding of demonstration projects. Therefore, please note OAPP will not offer face-to-face trainings during this budget year. All trainings will be conducted either through net and audio conferencing or e-learning modules.

Trainings. OAPP anticipates hosting approximately 8 net conference workshops over the next budget year. OAPP is working to gather and analyze the training needs of AFL projects to develop the most relevant training calendar for grantees. In addition, OAPP plans to develop 5-6 self-directed modules related to training issues that are critical for all AFL grantee staff. As these become available, Project Directors will be expected to ensure that each of the AFL project staff is trained using these self-directed modules. This will include training for new staff as they are hired.

Logistics. Project Directors will receive a flyer from OAPP with information pertaining to the training topic(s), training objectives, a preliminary outline (if available), and registration information. Since travel is not required for these trainings, grantees will not be limited to 2-3 staff per training event. Specific registration requirements will be included on each flyer that is distributed. Flyers are often sent out via the OAPP listserv; it is important that all relevant AFL directors, coordinators, and evaluators are registered for this listserv.

Continuing Education Credits. OAPP will offer continuing education units for both net conference and self-directed training workshops this year. Participants wishing to receive a Continuing Education Certificate must attend the entire training or complete the full module for credit. At this time, continuing education is only available for the field of social work. OAPP is in the process of exploring offering continuing education in other fields as well.

If you have questions regarding the technical assistance and training program, please contact Allison Roper at (240) 453-2806 or Allison.Roper@hhs.gov. We look forward to another exciting year of you and your staff's participation in OAPP sponsored trainings.

Sincerely,

Johanna Nestor, M.P.H.
Director
Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs


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U.S. Public Health Service