AIM 4 Teen Moms
Program Overview
AIM 4 Teen Moms (AIM4TM) is an evidence-based intervention to reduce rapid repeat pregnancies among teen moms by helping teen mothers define specific life aspirations, engage in planning to successfully achieve them, and consider the role of contraception in their lives.
AIM4TM is an eight-session program, consisting of six individual sessions and two group sessions. This intervention is delivered by a facilitator, known as an advisor, over the course of twelve weeks. Individual sessions are delivered at each participant’s home or any location at which she feels comfortable. AIM4TM engages teen moms in positive future thinking around a desired career goal. The program is designed for mothers between the ages of 14-20 years old with at least one child.
Program Content
AIM 4 Teen Moms emphasizes control over one’s future, connects present actions and reproductive choices with future achievements, and defines motherhood as an identity strength rather than a stigma. Drawing on the Theory of Possible Selves, Promotion-Prevention Motivational Orientations and youth development principles, AIM 4 Teen Moms identifies and builds on teen mothers’ hopes for their future and elicits their motivations for attaining adulthood goals.
The program consists of five main content core elements:
- Thinking about a positive possible future
- Through activities, and discussion, youth envision a positive future and set goals to achieve it
- Present actions to achieve future success
- Youth learn communication skills, how to identify their own strengths as well as needed resources and experience a sense of success through engagement in personal and group activities
- Safeguarding one’s future
- Youth are encouraged to safeguard their future through risk reduction
- Creating a reproductive life plan
- The curriculum incorporates knowledge of different methods of contraception and conceptualizes family planning as part of a larger holistic reproductive health agenda. Youth create a personalized reproductive life plans
- Motherhood as an identity strength
- The program acknowledges motherhood as a driving force that motivates many young mothers to succeed in life. Youth are encouraged to consider parenting as adding to the strengths and experiences useful to succeed rather than as a limiting factor in their life
Program Implementation
- If you are an organization interested in implementing AIM 4 Teen Moms, please contact the AIM Service Center for additional information on questions you may have.
- Once funded to implement AIM 4 Teen Moms, organizations enter into a contractual agreement with CHLA
- Once properly licensed, organizations send staff to attend a 3 day training to become certified AIM 4 Teen Moms Advisors and order youth materials from the AIM Service Center to be distributed to the participants that go through AIM 4 Teen Moms