This summer, Fact Forward was featured in The New York Times, Post and Courier, and NPR in a series of stories about the federal government’s cancellation of Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program grants across the country.
June 26, 2026, we received a letter terminating our $1.6 million federal grant, effective immediately. The letter claimed our programming encouraged and normalized sexual activity among minors.
As our CEO, Dr. Rena Dixon, told the Times: “That information was just not true.”
Here are the facts:
✅ Several lessons cited in the letter were never used by Fact Forward.
✅ Other content had already been removed and documented in our Year 3 continuation application.
✅ The grant required us to use curricula from a federally approved list of programs shown by research to be age-appropriate and effective.
Over the course of the project, Fact Forward served 7,625 youth, educators, parents, and youth-serving professionals across the Carolinas. Since Congress created the program in 2010, the U.S. teen birth rate has dropped by more than 70%. That progress is worth protecting.
We weren’t alone. HHS canceled 53 of the program’s 67 grants, affecting organizations in more than two dozen states.
The impact here at home has been real. We’ve had to reduce our staff and cancel educator trainings and summer programming for teens across South Carolina. Our partner organizations in Barnwell, Florence, Orangeburg, and Richland counties are no longer receiving support to implement programs. But our commitment hasn’t changed. We’ve formally appealed the termination, and we’ll keep advocating for evidence-based education that helps young people make healthy, informed decisions.
Now, NPR reports that Congress approved $101 million for teen pregnancy prevention this year. About $100 million was still unspent with days left in the fiscal year.
Read the full Politico article here.
Stand with us: share this story, contact your members of Congress to let them know this funding should be restored to grantees, or support our work at factforward.networkforgood.com as we work to raise $50,000 to continue our work through 2027. Every dollar keeps evidence-based adolescent health programs in South Carolina communities.