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November 16, 2006 |
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GAO Report Asks “Where’s the Oversight?”
Slams Administration for Children and Families for Lapse in Supervision of Abstinence-Only Programs
(Washington, DC November 16, 2006) – Today, the Government Accountability Office called the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to task for failing to provide adequate oversight of the information disseminated through federal abstinence-only programs. The GAO specifically stated that ACF, which supervises two multimillion dollar abstinence-only programs “does not review its grantees’ education materials for scientific accuracy and does not require grantees of either program to review their own materials for scientific accuracy.”
"Who’s minding the store?” said James Wagoner, President of Advocates for Youth. "ACF provides funding to states and individual organizations to the tune of over $160 million a year to teach abstinence-only to America’s teens and doesn’t care if the information given to these young people is scientifically correct.”
This newest revelation about ACF comes on the heels of last month’s program announcement instructing states to refocus their abstinence-only programs to include unmarried adults up to the age of 29 and a GAO decision that under the Public Health Act “medically accurate information about condoms” must be included in abstinence-only programs.
However, the latest GAO finding does not come as a surprise. In September 2005, Advocates for Youth and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States filed a legal challenge with ACF questioning the quality of information disseminated through abstinence-only programs. ACF dismissed the challenge by stating that materials “produced do not represent official ACF documents and are not disseminated on behalf of ACF.”
"Clearly, the ACF needs to take some responsibility,” added Wagoner. “As a public health agency, it is their job to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not spent to spread misinformation and half-truths with potentially life-threatening consequences.”
Over a hundred medical and public health organizations, including the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Society for Adolescent Medicine (SAM) support medically accurate, comprehensive sex education. Young people deserve honest and complete information to protect their health and well-being..
"Ignorance is nobody’s ally in the era of AIDS. Denying young people the information they need to protect their health and their lives runs counter to good public health and basic common sense,” added Wagoner.
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Advocates for Youth is a national, nonprofit organization that creates programs and supports policies that help young people make safe, responsible decisions about their sexual and reproductive health.
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