Contraceptive and Reproductive Health Services for Teens
From 2010 to 2015, CDC, the federal Office of Adolescent Health (OAH), and the Office of Population Affairs collaborated to demonstrate the effectiveness of innovative, multicomponent, communitywide initiatives in reducing rates of teen pregnancy and births in communities with the highest rates, with a focus on reaching African American and Latino or Hispanic young people aged 15 to 19 years.
A key component of the initiatives was ensuring clinical partners are providing youth-friendly, culturally- competent reproductive health care services that are easily accessible to all young people in the community, and establishing linkages between teen pregnancy prevention program partners and clinics that serve at-risk youth from the target community. CDC partnered with the national organization CAI to provide training and technical assistance to grantees to improve community adolescent reproductive health services.
CDC, CAI, along with OAH and other grantees, collaboratively developed valuable reproductive health care tools and resources that may be useful for other teen pregnancy prevention initiatives:
Evidence-based Clinical Practices pdf icon[PDF – 138KB]
Using the rapid synthesis and translation process[1] to facilitate the translation of professional recommendations and scientific evidence, CDC and CAI developed this checklist to assist communitywide initiative health partners in providing accessible and improved reproductive services for adolescents.
Publications
Romero LM, Middleton D, Mueller T, Avellino L, Hallum-Montes R
J Adolesc Health. 2015 Nov;57(5):488-95. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2015.07.013. Epub 2015 Sep 15.
Hallum-Montes R, Middleton D, Schlanger K, Romero L
J Adolesc Health. 2016 Mar;58(3):276-83. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2015.11.002
Assessment Tools
- Clinical Partner Needs Assessment Tool [PDF – 707KB]pdf icon—This tool helps organizations identify current services, as well as areas of potential growth, related to the provision of health care services to support adolescent reproductive health. Information gathered through this assessment can be used to track health center progress in improving youth access to contraceptive and reproductive health services.
Reporting Tools
- Performance Measure Reporting Tool [PDF – 616KB]pdf icon —This tool can help organizations involved in community-wide teen pregnancy prevention initiatives to evaluate their progress in the areas of evidence-based programs, contraceptive and reproductive health services, community mobilization, stakeholder education, and working with diverse communities.
[1] Thigpen S, Puddy RW, Singer HH, et al. Moving knowledge into action: Developing the rapid synthesis and translation process within the interactive systems framework. Am J Community Psychol 2012:1e10.