The Reproductive Health Equity Project for Foster Youth (RHEP)brings together youth in foster care and the agencies that serve them to promote systems that normalize, support, and promote the bodily autonomy and healthy sexual development of youth in foster care.

Our key strategies include:

1. Build local capacity to empower youth y by providing trauma-informed and culturally-relevant education, training, and resources directly to foster youth, caregivers, community-based health providers, social workers, and judicial officers;
2. Pursue local and state-level policy changes to support Los Angeles County’s efforts to empower youth and remove barriers;
3. Launch a comprehensive public awareness campaign as a platform for advocacy and information-sharing; and
4. Engage a Youth Advisory Board comprised of young people with a diverse array of lived experience in foster care to actively participate in and shape policy and advocacy efforts.

Our goal is that youth who touch the foster care system feel empowered and supported in their healthy sexual development; believe they have the right to healthy relationships, healthy sexual development and bodily autonomy; and know how, and are able, to realize their sexual health goals to such an extent that they have better reproductive and sexual health outcomes than youth in the general population.

RHEP’s development is led by a cross-sector leadership team that includes the agencies listed on the About Us page. The National Center for Youth Law provides backbone support for the Los Angeles Reproductive Health Equity Project for Foster Youth.

RHEP is generously funded in substantial part by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.

RHEP is a collective impact project. Collective impact is a way of working across multiple systems and stakeholders to tackle particularly sticky and complicated big issues. It is a framework that allows organizations from different sectors and with different expertise to tackle deeply entrenched and complex social problems in a coordinated way, leveraging their unique skills toward a shared goal.

We welcome partners who are interested in:

• Receiving sexual and reproductive health training, education, and resources for working with those involved in the child welfare system, including youth in foster care, caregivers, social workers, health providers, and/or judicial officers.
• Engaging in policy development and implementation improve healthy sexual development among foster youth.
• Connecting current and former foster youth to the RHEP Youth Advisory Board.
• Educating the public on this issue through contributing to a public awareness campaign.

We also encourage you to join our newsletter for updates on our work. If you have any questions, please submit the form above.

Click here for Teen Talk Foster Youth FAQs

Los Angeles County currently serves 35,800 youth in foster care and is the largest child welfare system in California. About 30% are between the ages of 11 and 17, and 11.5% are 18-21. 49.6% are male and 50.4% are female. Los Angeles’ child welfare system is disproportionately represented with children of color: 58.7% are Latino, 29% are Black and 10.5% are White.

Foster youth self-report a disproportionately high rate of unplanned pregnancy. This unconscionably high rate of unplanned pregnancy highlights that barriers are impeding youth in foster care from realizing their intent.

RHEP is a new initiative. We are currently seeking partners who are interested in:

• Receiving sexual and reproductive health training, education, and resources for foster youth, caregivers, social workers, health providers, and/or judicial officers;
• Engaging in policy development and implementation in Los Angeles County;
• Connecting current and former foster youth to the RHEP Youth Advisory Board
• Building public will around this issue through contributing to a public awareness campaign.

Youth in foster care face disproportionately poor reproductive and sexual health outcomes and experiences, including high rates of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, poor prenatal outcomes including stillbirth, miscarriage and low birth weight, as well as lack of sexual health education and access to care.

National teenage birth rates have reduced in recent years and California is the state that has reduced its teen birth rate by the most in the U.S. (Change In Teen Birth Rate Comparison, 2019). However, this reduction has not been equitable. Youth in California foster care, interviewed at ages 17, 19, and 21, experience 2-3 times the rate of pregnancy as youth in the general population (Courtney et al., 2014; Courtney et al., 2017; Courtney et al., 2018). At age 17, 26% report at least one pregnancy compared to 10% in the general population (Courtney et al., 2014). By age 21, 59% of women who have been in foster care report at least one pregnancy (Courtney et al., 2018). Notably, the vast majority did not plan to become pregnant and do not call their pregnancies “wanted.” At age 17, when asked if their previous pregnancy was wanted at the time, almost 70% (Courtney et al., 2014). 

Youth in foster care also have poor prenatal outcomes. At age 17, over 42% of those who reported having been pregnant said they suffered stillbirth or miscarriage, and over 20% never received prenatal care. (Courtney et al., 2014). 

Youth in foster care also have disproportionately higher STI rates than their peers. In a national study, youth with a history in foster care reported STI rates at two to ten times the rate in the general population (Courtney et al., 2011). In California, youth interviewed at age 21 reported almost twice the rate of STIs as in the general population (Courtney et al., 2018)

Some of RHEP’s key strategies include:

1. Engage a Youth Advisory Board comprised of young people with a diverse array of lived experiences in foster care to actively participate in and shape policy and advocacy efforts.
2. Build local capacity to empower youth by providing trauma-informed and culturally relevant education, training, and resources directly to foster youth, caregivers, community-based health providers, social workers, and judges.
3. Pursue local and state-level policy changes to support efforts to empower youth and remove barriers to sexual and reproductive health care.
4. Launch a comprehensive public awareness campaign as a platform for advocacy and information-sharing