Members Question the Effectiveness of Youth Abstinence Programs

Today Chairman Waxman, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, and Congresswoman Barbara Lee reiterated their concern about the implementation of youth abstinence programs in the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). They requested detailed information about how the Administration intends to monitor the implementation of its policies and a description of all planned evaluations of the effectiveness of abstinence programs.

In an earlier July 16, 2007 letter to Mark R. Dybul, US Global AIDS Coordinator at the Department of State, Chairman Waxman, Chairman Lantos, and Congresswoman Lee asked how PEPFAR planned to respond to a government-commissioned evaluation which found that these programs are not meeting the needs of sexually active or at-risk youth. An August 13, 2007, response from Jeffrey Bergner, Assistant Secretary of Legislative Affairs described actions that individual programs have taken, and technical assistance that the U.S. government is offering in various countries. However, his response did not include a plan to systematically fill the gaps that the evaluators found, nor did it offer evidence of the effectiveness of these programs.