Vision of You and the VPREIS Project
About | VOY Program Info
Through the Virginia Personal Responsibility Education Program Innovative Strategies (VPREIS) project, SexEdVA at James Madison University served youth residing in areas of Virginia with high teen birth rates, and that demonstrated elevated risk factors for experiencing/causing a teen pregnancy and contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS.
SexEdVA’s VPREIS initiative was a comprehensive, collaborative effort that emphasized both abstinence and contraception and addressed the adulthood preparation subjects of healthy relationships, healthy life skills, adolescent development, and parent-child communication – all in order to increase knowledge and skills and change behaviors among vulnerable populations. The VPREIS project was established in 2016 and came to a close in 2021.
The VPREIS initiative used JMU SexEdVA’s Vision of You (VOY) curriculum, an interactive, self-paced online intervention. Throughout the initiative, the curriculum was implemented and rigorously evaluated (using a random controlled trial design) with the following vulnerable high-school-aged youth populations: youth-serving sentences in Virginia’s juvenile detention centers, youth attending alternative education and/or night school programs, and youth referred to Community Services Board programs. The project involved 23 sites and 790 youth across the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Results indicated that the VoY program was effective in reducing the number of sexual partners and reducing the rate of unprotected sex as well as increasing future orientation among the target population. To learn more about the evaluation results for Vision of You, download the VOY Impact Report.
Project Goals
The overall goal was to reduce pregnancies, births, and STIs among high-risk youth populations in rural Virginia.
To meet this goal, the project’s objectives were to:
1. Target youth populations that are at highest risk of teen pregnancy
2. Rigorously evaluate the Vision of You program using a randomized controlled trial design
3. Manualize and package the Vision of You program
4. Disseminate lessons learned, best practices, and relevant findings
5. To provide a comprehensive sexuality education curriculum that is inclusive and culturally relevant
Participant-level Goals
If the overall goal was met, the following will be demonstrated by participants in the program:
A reduction in the frequency of sexual activity
A reduction in the number of sexual partners
An increase in contraceptive use
An increase in adulthood preparation subject knowledge and skills (healthy relationships, healthy life skills, parent-child communication, and adolescent development)