Assistance program
Sexual Risk Avoidance Education
$251.3 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Administration for Children and Families, Health and Human Services, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 93.060
- What it does
- The purpose of this program is to promote sexual risk avoidance education as defined by section 1110 of the Social Security Act, for adolescents. The focus of the program is to teach participants how to voluntarily refrain from non-marital sexual activity, and teach the benefits associated with self-regulation, success sequencing for poverty prevention, healthy relationships, goal setting, resisting sexual coercion, dating violence, and other youth risk behaviors such as underage drinking or illicit drug use without normalizing teen sexual activity. Recipients use an evidenced based approach and/or evidence-informed strategies to educate youth on how to avoid risks that could lead to non-marital sexual activity. SRAE projects are implemented using a Positive Youth Development (PYD) framework as part of risk avoidance strategies, to help participants build healthy life skills, develop individual protective factors that reduce risks, empower youth to make healthy decisions, and provide tools and resources to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Linking program participants to services provided by local community partners that support the safety and well-being of youth is also a key component to the program. The services are targeted to youth ages 10 to 19 and participants that reside in areas with high rates of teen births and/or are at greatest risk of contracting STIs. The program’s goals are to empower participants to make healthy decisions, and provide tools and resources to prevent pregnancy, STIs, and youth engagement in other risky behaviors. Recipients must agree to use medically accurate information referenced to peer-reviewed publications by educational, scientific, governmental, or health organizations and implement an evidence-based approach integrating research findings with practical implementation that aligns with the needs and desired outcomes for the intended audience.
- Who benefits
- Youth populations, ages 10-19 and those who are at risk for non-marital sexual activity and other risk behaviors, benefit from the assistance. Vulnerable populations of youth include, but are not limited to, youth living in under resourced regions and areas with high rates of teen births and STIs, including HIV; culturally underrepresented youth populations, especially Hispanic, African American, or Native American teenagers; youth in or aging out of foster care or adjudication systems; youth who are victims of trafficking; runaway and homeless youth; and other vulnerable youth populations.
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
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- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments