Sebastieon Semper has a lot brothers and sisters. Twenty-one, to be exact.
“My father -- let’s just say he was a rolling stone,” said the 16-year-old Brooklyn resident.
His family's history is one reason Semper spends a lot of time talking to friends and peers about contraception methods, sexually transmitted infections and safe relationships. He was trained as a sexual health educator under a initiative run by the Department of Health to decrease teen pregnancy rates across New York City.
From his point of view, it's working.
"You know how many kids I've saved?" Semper said when telling a story about a friend who was surprised to hear that using one condom was safer than using two.
But the program, called New York City Teens Connection, was notified recently that the five-year grant it received from the Obama administration would end two years early. Estelle Raboni, director of the program, said the annual $2 million federal grant comprises 83 percent of its budget.
“Why would you reel that back?” said Raboni. “Why not just continue until we actually get to a place where teen pregnancy rates are almost essentially non-existent?”
NYC Teen Connection is one of many public health groups across the country that saw their federal grants pulled prematurely. In one notification letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services viewed by WNYC, there was no explanation why the grant was discontinued.
Federal health officials did not respond to WNYC’s request for comment. In a statement to the New York Times in July, an HHS spokesman said the grants were rescinded because of “very weak evidence of positive impact of these programs.”
Raboni disagreed with that assessment. She said her program relied on evidence-based, measurable education methods to decrease teen pregnancy. In the Bronx, more than 90 health providers learned how to implement the contraceptive called Nexplanon as part of the program. Those providers then performed approximately 400 Nexplanon insertions in the first three months after the training.
"It's really important for us to connect young people, not just with any provider but with the providers who are actually providing the best practices of adolescent health care," Raboni said. “The work we’re doing is sort of to inoculate young people from teen pregnancy."
The program certainly faced uphill challenges. Teen pregnancy rates in pockets of the city are significantly higher than the national average of 26.6 per 1,000 teenage girls. Boroughs with the highest rates include the Bronx (42.8), Brooklyn (34.2) and Staten Island (33.3).
The program also partners with the Department of Education to improve sexual health education and access to reproductive health resources for students in 138 public high schools. A spokesman did not say how schools would move forward if NYC Teens Connection shuts down.
Middle school and high school students in New York City are required to take one semester of health education every year. The department spokesman said high schools had to provide free condoms as part of the city’s HIV/AIDS prevention program.
But the state of sexual health education in the city schools is widely seen as inadequate. According to a report by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, 88 percent of middle and high schools do not have a teacher licensed to teach health education, and only about 65 percent of teens surveyed in 2016 said they knew where to go for reproductive health resources.
The New York City Council voted unanimously in May to convene a task force to review sexual education for grades K-12. The City Council is slated to hear recommendations from the task force in December.
Meanwhile, Semper said he’s not planning to scale back his education efforts anytime soon. He said he liked being the person his friends ask for a condom or about safe sex.
“I feel like I’ve learned so much, like there’s no going back,” said Semper. “With or without the funding. I’m still just gonna try to help and save as many people as I can.”