Teaching teens about sex: A fidelity assessment model for Making Proud Choices

•We replicate an evidence-based comprehensive sex education curriculum under different conditions than those for which the program was initially found to be effective.•We describe a fidelity assessment tool created to ensure program adherence.•We find that the program was effective with different populations (foster care youth and both Whites and African-Americans) and in different settings (rural as well as urban) than those for which it was originally designed.

Given the increased necessity for local program administrators to operate evidenced-based programs developed for different target populations and community settings, we present evidence about the effectiveness of a specific adolescent health intervention, Making Proud Choices (MPC). MPC was originally designed for inner city, African-American youth in high HIV communities, but implemented recently in diverse settings shown to be at high risk of teen-pregnancy in Missouri. In light of the pressures for local adaptation of the comprehensive sexual education curriculum, we created a three-pronged fidelity assessment tool. We find that significant gains are reported in terms of knowledge as well as intent to use a condom. Furthermore, these findings are consistently achieved in both urban and rural settings, with foster care youth, and for Whites and African-Americans.