IMPORTANT NOTE: Before you apply for this funding, we encourage you to have a conversation with our grants team. Please email Aaron @ DibbleInstitute.org to set up a quick call.
The Office of Population Affairs has released the following cooperative agreement: Replicating Effective Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Programs.
The submission deadline is July 23, 2026.
The goal of this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is to promote an upstream, preventive approach to adolescent health by equipping young people with the knowledge and decision-making skills necessary for lifelong well-being, thereby supporting optimal health and reducing rates of teen pregnancy.
Grants funded through this NOFO will support replication of effective programs that provide adolescents with medically accurate, age-appropriate education and counseling that help them understand their bodies, clarify reproductive life goals, and make informed health decisions.
OPA is looking to prioritize projects that provide medically accurate and age-appropriate programs that reduce teen pregnancy and advance adolescent health by strengthening body literacy, informed consent, and optimal health through the replication of effective teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) programs.
Expectations include:
- Implement medically accurate and age-appropriate programs
- Implement body literacy education to support informed consent
- Implement reproductive goals counseling
- Ensure transparency and protection of parental rights
- Incorporate sexual risk avoidance education
- Regularly monitor and evaluate project activities
Love Notes 4.1 – Sexual Delay-Optimal Health (SD) and Love Notes 4.1 – Abstinence Only (AO) are the versions of Love Notes that meet the criteria of this funding announcement as they comply with the criteria and are evidence-based. These programs align with SRA education standards. They are evidence-based, medically accurate, age-appropriate, adaptable, and developed for young people 14-24. A middle school adaptation is available. We encourage you to choose the version that best aligns with your community.
Love Notes may be adapted in consultation with the developer to ensure medical accuracy, age-appropriateness, and alignment with OASH priorities.
Love Notes:
- Delays the initiation of sexual activity.
- Helps youth who are already sexually active return to a lifestyle without sex.
- Reduces adolescents’ risk for experiencing a pregnancy by 46%.
- Effectively attracts and retains more youth!
Love Notes
NOFO ExpectationsLove Notes – Sexual Delay (SD) |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
Requirements |
Y |
N |
Explanation |
| 1. Implement medically accurate and age-appropriate programs |
✓ |
Love Notes 4.1 SD and AO are both suitable for the developmental stage of the intended audience and support healthy, informed decision-making, including promoting delayed sexual initiation as a behavior associated with reduced teen pregnancy. | |
| 2. Implement Body Literacy Education to Support Informed Consent |
X |
We recommend that you find modules to augment your Love Notes 4.1 SD | AO implementation that cover all of the requirements needed to support Body Literacy education.
For additional details or clarification, email Aaron @ Dibbleinstitute.org |
|
| 3. Implement Reproductive Goals Counseling |
✓ |
Love Notes 4.1 SD and AO offer reproductive goals counseling by educating clients on how current behaviors, health choices, and life decisions may affect their future reproductive health and overall well-being. Both programs offer evidence-informed pathways associated with improved economic and family stability, including completion of education, participation in the workforce, and marriage prior to childbearing.
Examples include:
|
|
| 4. Ensure Transparency and Protection of Parental Rights |
✓ |
The Dibble Institute supports organizations using the Love Notes (SD) and (AO) programs by ensuring transparency and respect for parental rights by providing free 30-day review copies of the programs, so caregivers can meaningfully review the programs’ content, materials, and activities.
(Dibble will also give awardees access to review copies for federal review.) |
|
| 5. Incorporate Sexual Risk Avoidance Education |
✓ |
Love Notes 4.1 SD and AO incorporate sexual risk avoidance (SRA) education as a component of program delivery. These programs draw on SRA frameworks that provide developmentally appropriate instruction on the risks associated with adolescent sexual activity, the benefits of delay, and strategies for resisting social pressure.
Love Notes has been crosswalked with the following SRA Frameworks: |
|
| 6. Regularly monitor and evaluate project activities, analyze findings, and apply results to strengthen implementation, improve quality, and ensure progress toward achieving project goals |
X*Partially |
Throughout the project, OPA expects recipients to monitor, evaluate, and continuously improve the fidelity and quality of effective program implementation. The Dibble Institute provides fidelity logs to motor program implementation and professional development training to ensure implementation fidelity. | |
From the NOFO: For each effective program proposed for replication, provide a summary confirming that at least one research study of the program meets the criterion outlined in Appendix A of the NOFO. The grant submission must include a citation and abstract for each study.
Please see below for a list of links and publications for studies conducted on Love Notes that demonstrate elements of Appendix A, including Study Design, Study Quality, and Evidence of Effectiveness.
Appendix A. Love Notes Ranking
Criteria Category |
High Quality Study Rating |
Moderate Study Rating |
| Study Design |
✓ |
|
| Attrition |
✓ |
|
| Baseline Equivalence |
✓ |
|
| Reassignment |
✓ |
|
| Confounding Factors |
✓ |
The citations provided below give a rationale for choosing Love Notes 4.1 SD or AO as your intervention. They cite evidence that demonstrates how Love Notes applies its key program elements to positively influence youth behavior change, namely delaying initiation of sexual activity, preventing and reducing teen pregnancies and sexual activity.
- Impact of Two Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Interventions on Risky Sexual Behavior: A Three-Arm Cluster Randomized Control Trial (pdf). Anita P. Barbee, MSSW, PhD, Michael R. Cunningham, PhD, Michiel A. van Zyl, PhD, Becky F. Antle, MSSW, PhD, and Cheri N. Langley,PhD, MPH, 2016.
The purpose of this study was to test the efficacy of Reducing the Risk (RTR) and Love Notes (LN) on reducing risky sexual behavior among youths yet to experience or cause a pregnancy. Methods. The four dependent variables were ever had sex, condom use, birth control use, and number of sexual partners at 3- and 6-month follow-up in a 3-arm cluster randomized controlled trial of 1448 impoverished youths, aged 14 to 19 years, in 23 community-based organizations in Louisville, Kentucky, from September 2011 through March 2014. At 6 months, LN participants reported fewer sexual partners and were less likely to have ever had sex compared with the control condition.* We provided the first rigorous study of LN, which embeds sex education into a larger curriculum on healthy relationships and violence prevention.
- Barbee, A. P., Cunningham, M. R., Antle, B. F., Langley, C. N. (2022). Impact of a relationship-based intervention, Love Notes, on teen pregnancy prevention. Family Relations, 1-20.
In this research, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) tested the efficacy of two teen pregnancy prevention (TPP) curricula, Reducing the Risk and Love Notes, compared with a group of adolescents in a control condition, on primary pregnancy prevention among youth at high-risk for teen pregnancy. The study examined the number of reported pregnancies across the first year after the interventions from a three-arm, cluster RCT engaging 1,448 youth living in poverty between the ages of 14 and 19 years in 23 community-based organizations in a southeastern U.S. city. At the 1-year follow-up, youth in Love Notes report significantly fewer pregnancies compared with the control condition (18 pregnancies, 3.51%).* This study provides additional evidence for the efficacy of Love Notes, which embeds sex education into a larger curriculum on life planning and healthy relationship formation and maintenance.
*Denotes a key sexual risk behavior outcome as highlighted in the NOFO
The following fidelity aids and checklists are included when you purchase the Love Notes 4.1 AO and SD Manual:
- Annotated slide deck to focus the instructor on key content.
- Observational fidelity tools for coaches and evaluators.
- Love Notes knowledge test.
- Inventory of related scales that can assess attitudinal and behavioral outcomes regarding sex, relationship quality, communication, conflict, control, violence as well as mediators.
Note: To maintain fidelity, training of your organization’s Love Notes instructors by a Dibble Training Specialist is required.
Body Literacy Guidance
We recommend that you find modules to augment your Love Notes 4.1 SD | AO implementation, which cover all the requirements needed to support Body Literacy education.
For additional details or clarification, email Aaron @ Dibbleinstitute.org
Your grant proposal should have a strategy for meaningfully engaging stakeholders—including adolescents, parents or guardians, community partners, and relevant organizations—across all phases of the project (planning, implementation, and evaluation).
We can assist you by offering two hours of complimentary technical assistance (TA) for each Group Training Agreement. Additional TA at $95 an hour may be budgeted into your grant proposal based on your needs.
Based on your needs, topics could include:
- Referral recruiting strategies (why, how, incentives)
- Word of mouth recruiting strategies (why, how, incentives)
- Retention
- Barriers to participation and how to overcome them
- Motivators
- Recruiting partners
- Community Service providers – referring and tracking
- Sustainability plans
- Supporting your grant through social media
- Communicating your outcomes
- The little things that make a difference in your grant’s success– schedule, class size, room layout, instructor selection
The Dibble Institute offers high-quality, training and professional development in the program model for all your project staff and facilitators to ensure understanding of the core components of the curriculum and fidelity to the evidence-based program model.
We are also available to provide follow-up technical assistance to facilitators, as needed. To assure the success of your Love Notes 4.1 SD or AO implementation, we recommend the following training protocols:
1) For clients new to Love Notes
Five day 3.5-hour per day online training or 3 full day in-person training for all instructional and project staff. Group discounts are available.
Please call Carlie Kaeppler at 800-695-7975 ext. 703 or Carlie @ Dibbbleinstitute.org to obtain a training quote.
2) Clients who have attended a Dibble-certified training in a previous edition of Love Notes (3.0 or earlier) or Relationship Smarts PLUS
One day virtual or in-person training to review new, updated, and/or content unique to Love Notes 4.1 AO/SD.
Please call Dr. Rachel Savasuk-Luxton at 800-695-7975 ext. 705 or email Rachel @ Dibbleinstitute.org to obtain a training quote.
3) Clients who have attended a Dibble-certified training in Love Notes 4.0 Classic or SRA or 4.1 CSE
Please call Dr. Rachel Savasuk-Luxton at 800-695-7975 ext. 705 or email Rachel @ Dibbleinstitute.org to begin a needs assessment process and development of your personalized training plan.
4) Clients with TOT-Certified Love Notes Trainers on staff
- A relevant list of opportunities for your organization at the federal, state, and local levels
- A description of each grant or other funding type
- Relevant dates, deadlines, and information needed to apply
- A comprehensive list of Dibble resources to support your application
- A one-on-one meeting with Dibble staff to review the report and discuss next steps
Please email Kay Reed, Executive Director, at kayreed @ DibbleInstitute.org to set up a time to consult.
Let the world know about your success!
We’d be pleased to invite you to be a speaker at Dibble’s monthly webinar to share your successes, and also what you are learning. Webinar speakers often prepare a Case Study that can be shared with the audience to showcase your program, its high points and its inevitable challenges.
We regularly have 300-400 people from across the country registering for and attending our webinars.
Please feel welcome to write this into your grant application as a dissemination strategy,
Love Notes 4.1 AO Logic Model
Love Notes 4.1 SD Logic Model
Art supplies for Love Notes 4.1 SD or AO could total up to $200 per 30 participants. Please budget accordingly.
Please complete this form as part of your planning and budgeting process. We will need to see it prior to signing an MOU with your organization.
Please click here to see a short video on how to complete this worksheet.
Download the 2026 Replicating TPP Materials and Training Agreement
The Dibble Institute is pleased to sign an MOU with you as part of your application. An MOU is required as a part of your submission for this NOFO.
To help us understand your plans, please send an email to Aaron @ DibbleInstitute.org with the following information:
- Numbers of students you plan to serve each year of the grant.
- Your Materials and Training Budget worksheet.
- A Signed copy of your MOU.
