About

The 4Me Teen Health Project is a community-level comprehensive sex education and prevention program developed for teens living in low income housing complexes.  The evidence-based program focuses on preventing HIV, sexually transmitted infections and teen pregnancy.

The Coalition is partnering with the Jacksonville Housing Authority to implement 4Me in two JHA-owned complexes, Victory Pointe and Brentwood Lakes. The Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida is also a key partner. The pilot program is funded by the Ounce of Prevention Fund of Florida. It is an implementation strategy of the NEFL Teen Pregnancy Task Force after it was identified as a best practice in both providing education and youth development opportunities to teens and engaging parents.

Comprehensive Sex Education

Adolescents ages 12-17 years old attend four workshops that focus on HIV/STI education, pregnancy prevention and skills training on avoiding unwanted sex, sexual negotiation and condom use, with themes of personal pride and self-respect.

Parent Workshops

Parents of adolescent enrollees are offered a workshop that focuses on HIV/AIDS and pregnancy prevention information and approaches to discussing issues related to abstinence and safe sex/condom use with their children

Teen Leadership Council

The Leadership Council is comprised on teens who completed the education sessions and showed potential as community leaders and peer educators. The Council meets every other week and completes health and service-related activities.

We recently asked teens that completed the program to complete the following sentence:

What I like most about 4Me Teen Health Project is…

•  “[Them] helping me with my lifestyle such as telling me about sex and more.”
•  “That Parents aren’t there and we get to talk freely about things to do. Also, that teens get together.”
•  “It teaches me how to live life and how to protect yourself when you are having sex.”
•  “That they are preparing us for the future.”
•  “I learned about all different parts of the female body and the male body and hormones.”
•  “The fact you can be real when you are talking and the staff is not all up tight.”