Since its founding in 1980 as the Center for Population Options, Advocates for Youth has served as a bold voice and respected leader in the field of adolescent reproductive and sexual health. For almost three decades, the organization has worked tirelessly to promote effective adolescent reproductive and sexual health programs and policies in the United States and in low and middle countries. Below is a select list of the organization’s accomplishments spanning its 28-year history.  Or read our most recent annual report.

Advocates for Youth is:

• One of the first organizations to put adolescents’ reproductive and sexual health needs on the agenda of the international family planning field, establishing the International Clearinghouse on Adolescent Fertility in 1980.
• The creator of Life Planning Education, a 1983 ground-breaking sex education program that put sexuality into a life-skills/youth development context.
• A pioneer in the school-based clinic movement, creating the Support Center for School-based Health Care in 1984 and helping to launch the National Association for School-Based Health Care.
• One of the first mainstream organizations to recognize the potential dangers of HIV for adolescents, sponsoring a groundbreaking national conference on AIDS and adolescents among other HIV prevention initiatives as early as 1987.
• A major innovator in the field of parent-child communication beginning in 1989 with the publication of its widely acclaimed Talking With TV, a guide to using television to improve parent-child communication about sexuality. Advocates is also the national sponsor of Let's Talk Month (October) and the author of A Lifelong Dialogue: A Workplace Program to Enhance Parent-Child Communication, a project of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Business and Labor Responds to AIDS Initiative. Advocates’ Parents Sex Ed Center is visited by millions of parents annually.
• One of two co-sponsors of the First Inter-Africa Conference on Adolescent Reproductive Health in 1992.
• The founder of the first Internet intervention for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) youth, http://www.youthresource.com/.
• A leader in the field of youth involvement with over 25 years of experience bringing the voice of youth to adolescent reproductive and sexual health programming. Cutting-edge initiatives include promoting youth-adult partnerships in HIV community prevention planning, advocating for youth involvement in the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, and creating the International Youth Leadership Council to assist college students in advocating for increased U.S. foreign aid for international family planning and global HIV prevention.
• At the forefront of a national legislative strategy to eliminate federal funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, bringing together 39 national organizations in the reproductive rights, education, AIDS, civil rights, medical, and anti-censorship fields to actively advocate for adolescent access to comprehensive sexuality education. Recently, Advocates has also helped to lead a groundbreaking new collaboration among national organizations that assist state-based coalitions to improve sex education policies and programs.
• A regular contributor to and influencer of the media debate on adolescent reproductive and sexual health issues. In 2001, Advocates began to frame the sex education debate in the larger context of an assault on public health science. Through the development and use of its “ideology vs. science” framework, Advocates helped demonstrate how abstinence-only policies had evolved into anti-contraception/condom policies with major impact on teen pregnancy and HIV prevention in the U.S. and abroad. The issue was later picked up by environmental and science organizations and developed a life of its own beyond the original reproductive health context.
• An innovator of new programs to redress homophobia and transphobia in communities of color. Advocates founded the Anti-homophobia/Transphobia Project in 2007 to provide information, resources, and assistance to approximately 400 organizations serving youth of color around the country, helping them to make their programming more inclusive of GLBT youth of color.
• The founder of Amplify, the first fully-integrated hub for online activism and youth-led grassroots movement building for young activists across the country and around the world (http://www.amplifyyourvoice.org/).