President Barack Obama released his budget on April 10, 2013, detailing his funding priorities for Fiscal Year (FY) 2014.[1] The budget reflects the president’s commitment to federally funded sexuality education and sexual health programs. Overall, the president’s budget would eliminate the threat of sequester cuts in FY 2014 and beyond. Since federal agencies are still finalizing FY 2013 funding levels and trying to implement sequestration (automatic across the board funding) cuts, all FY 2014 funding levels are compared to FY 2012 final funding.

Key program funding in the President’s FY 2014 budget:

Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative (TPPI)

• Proposed $104.6 million (level to FY 2012) in total funding.
• Proposed $4.23 million for TPPI evaluation funding (down $8.5 million from FY 2012).
• This proposal would use funds from the Prevention and Public Health Program, which is only authorized through FY 2019 within the Affordable Care Act, limiting the long-term sustainability of TPPI funding.

Division of Adolescent and School Health (DASH)

• Proposed $32.4 million ($86,000 increase over FY 2012) in total funding.
• Included proposal to establish $3 million fund for the “evaluation of HIV school health activities.”[2]

Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP)

• Estimated $82 million (level to estimated FY 2013) in state-requested funding.
• Included state-requested funding and PREP competitive awards.
• This is a mandatory program so the total five-year funding for the program is specified in federal statute.

Additional funding measures include eliminating the $5 million discretionary abstinence-only-until-marriage grant program, Competitive Abstinence Education Grants. Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage mandatory funding is estimated to only total $37 million based on state funding requests. The president proposed that twelve million dollars of the unobligated Title V funds go to a new Foster Youth Pregnancy Prevention Program.  

The House of Representative passed its own FY 2014 budget on March 21, 2013; and the Senate passed a FY 2014 budget on March 23, 2013. Appropriations subcommittees will begin considering the 12 budget bills that make up the federal budget, referencing the president’s budget requests, as they consider final funding amounts for the fiscal year. Hearings on the Health and Human Services (HHS) portion of the president’s budget were held on April 24^th in the Senate and April 25^th in the House.  While congressional appropriations hearings are likely to begin in May, committee action on the funding bill that includes HHS is unlikely to begin until June or July.