MSM Gives $50,000 for Georgia Carrera Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Summer Program
June 3, 2015 – Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) didn’t only host and celebrate the success of its
federally funded youth program at the MSM Georgia Carrera Teenage Pregnancy Prevention
Culminating Luncheon on June 3rd, it also gave $50,000 to allow the Georgia Carrera Teenage Pregnancy Prevention (TPP)
program to have its annual four-week summer program. MSM President and Dean Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice was the keynote speaker at the Georgia Carrera Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Culminating
ceremony, which celebrated the accomplishments of the students and the success of
the TPP program.
The summer program provides activities for the youth that reinforce social skills learned during the program and helps them plan for the upcoming school year. Although the Georgia Carrera TPP program's five-year federal grant ends August 31, 2015, initially there had not been enough funds for the summer program to take place this year. Without the additional funding, the TPP program would have ended after June 13th when students return from a week-long educational Georgia Coastal tour. However, TPP program activities will now continue through July 3rd with the summer program reactivated.
Highlights of the five-year TPP program include:
- Over 200 students served across 5 counties (Cobb, Fulton, Jasper, Lamar and Spalding)- - 95% promotion rate, including matriculation to high school and successful completion of the 9th grade
- - Students have planned, organized and completed over 16 community service/entrepreneurial projects
- - Students consistently demonstrated knowledge gains in sexual/reproductive health and positive attitude towards delay of sexual activity
Georgia Carrera student and rising Benjamin E. Mays High School tenth grader Amiyus Mapson presented Dr. Montgomery Rice with appreciation gifts. Representatives Roberta Anderson (Jasper Carrera, Get Ahead House), Vickie Liggins (Metro Carrera, Joshua Generation) and Patsy Mann (Lamar/Spalding Carrera, A.D. Smith Community Service), from each community-based organization that partnered in the TPP program, also received awards for their invaluable work.
About the Georgia Carrera Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Program
On September 1, 2010, Dr. Mary Langley and the Health Promotion Resource Center in the Department of Community Health & Preventive Medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine, received a five-year grant totaling $7.5 million from the Office of Adolescent Health, to replicate the Children's Aid Society’s Carrera Teenage Pregnancy Prevention Program (TPP). During the course of the five-year grant, over 150 students were recruited and have transitioned from middle to high school, maturing physically, emotionally and socially. The Georgia Carrera students have reached many milestones and have shown that youth are not at risk, but at promise! TPP has worked with three community-based organizations from three different geographical locations, rural-Monticello (Jasper County), micropolitan-Barnesville (Lamar County), and metropolitan-Atlanta (Fulton and Cobb Counties).
