Recently deeming teen pregnancy "one of the six winnable battles," the Centers for Disease Control is sending $7.5 million to tackle Richmond County's high teen birth rate.

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One of just eight communities in the United States awarded the CDC funds, Augusta has until 2015 to drop a birth rate of 71.2 per 1,000 people by 10 percent, but it won't be going it alone.

Administering the grant funds, some $1.5 million per year, is the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, an Atlanta-based organization that applied for the money on behalf of 10 Augusta community organizations and five health clinics, according Michele Ozumba, Georgia's former director of adolescent health and president of GCAPP.

"The scale of this allows us to have sustained investment and focus on a community, with significant partnerships on the ground," Ozumba said.

"On the ground" includes locally-based organizations, such as Fort Gordon Youth Challenge Academy, Department of Juvenile Justice, East Central Health District and Kids Restart Inc., as well as health clinics, including Medical College of Georgia and Planned Parenthood Southeast.

By design, the program is not bound to any curriculum; there is a menu of 28 evidence-based programs from which to choose, said GCAPP vice president Kim Nolte.

With acronyms such as PHAT (Promoting Health Among Teens), the programs are geared toward elementary, middle and high schools, as well as in alternative schools, youth detention centers and community organizations.

While several include an emphasis on abstinence, only one is abstinence-only, according to program descriptions published on the Department of Health and Human Services Web site.

And the grant was awarded without involvement of the Richmond County School District, where the board of education recently rejected implementing an abstinence-only curriculum at two schools.

"We hope that we'll eventually have them involved with the project," Ozumba said.

The school district was competing for a similar grant with an earlier deadline, so opted not to join GCAPP's application, according to Nolte.

Having several community partners and curricula ensures a specific target -- of reaching 16,000 black and Hispanic teen girls -- will be met, but the program is not exclusive, Ozumba said.

Clinic involvement is key to connecting sexually-active teens with the services they need, Nolte said.

GCAPP selected Richmond County out of 13 Georgia counties because of its higher birth rate, larger population and existing network of teen pregnancy prevention strategies, she said.

Serving as an unfortunate point of comparison with Richmond will be similarly-sized Muscogee County, where Columbus teens get pregnant nearly as often as those here, but which will not benefit from the grant funds.

The program is still in its design phase. During the next few months, involved partners will meet with GCAPP and the CDC to figure out a game plan to accomplish the goals.

"The excitement is that we have five years to be focused, to give us the capacity to really build the expertise," Nolte said. "It's the best opportunity we've ever had in Georgia. I believe we can meet the challenge."

Augusta already successfully lowered its teen pregnancy rate, which is down from 2000, when nearly one in 10 teen girls became pregnant. In 2008, the county saw a drop of 14.6 percent, according to East Central Health District, now a partner in the grant award, but still the rate remains above state and national averages.

The announcement also falls during "Let's Talk" month, when parents are encouraged to talk to their children about sex, said Mary Stacy, youth development coordinator for the district.

Partners updated about the grant award were thrilled.

"We're extremely excited to be working with the CDC and GCAPP," said Monique Colon, the program manager for Richmond County Juvenile Court. "Any time we can impact the community in a positive way, we're happy to do that."

Colon said her agency likely would easily surpass its target of 400 youth.

Kids Restart has until now served primarily as a center for supervised visitation for children in foster care, but it soon will add pregnancy prevention services to its offerings, Executive Director Daniela Whitaker said.

"I'm really excited about this grant, because I think we can do so much good," Whitaker said.

During her eight years with the agency, she's watched teen parents sometimes end up at the center.

"I've seen a lot of teen mothers who said 'I did not know what I was doing to get pregnant,' " she said. "That's what I'm hoping to stop; to get that education out there."