Author Interviews, Pediatrics, Social Issues / 14.10.2016
Impact of Two Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Interventions on Risky Sexual Behavior
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Anita P. Barbee, MSSW, Ph.D.
Professor and Distinguished University Scholar
President-Elect, International Association for Relationship Research
Kent School of Social Work
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: In 2010, our team at the University of Louisville with colleagues from Spalding University, were awarded a Tier 2 grant from the Office of Adolescent Health to study innovative teen pregnancy prevention interventions. We assembled a fantastic team of staff, students, community members and twenty three community based organizations to work together collaboratively to recruit and retain close to 1450 youth from the most distressed areas of our metropolitan area in order to conduct a randomized controlled trial.
We tested the efficacy of two interventions compared to a control condition. Our reason for this was to see how a new type of teen pregnancy intervention would perform compared to a more typical comprehensive sex education program, Reducing the Risk, which was already on the OAH list of evidence based interventions as well as to a control condition, which focused on community building but had no content on personal self esteem building, healthy relationships, dating violence or sexuality. The new program that was tested was Love Notes. Love Notes is a healthy relationship curriculum that addresses the context of sexual exploration as well as key points in preventing problematic outcomes of sexual activity such as the spread of disease, pregnancy and emotional heartache. The groups of youth that continue to have high rates of pregnancy tend to be disconnected from society through poverty and discrimination (minority and poor youth) or from family as a result of leaving home countries (refugees and immigrants), being removed from their homes due to child abuse or neglect (foster youth) or being rejected from families due to their LGBTQ orientations.
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