At Risk Youths Taking Charge of their Sexual Health

Amanda Thornton
Psy 247:01
November 2015

I.

The Problem or Introduction

The article Prime Time: 12 Month Sexual Health Outcomes of a Clinic-Based

Intervention to Prevent Pregnancy Risk Behaviors is a study on intervention done to a certain
population of high risk women who attended this clinic for services. In this study, the main focus
was to use intervention plans to decrease pregnancy risk among the high-risk young women
and to increase their overall sexual risk behaviors. Sexual risk was taken into consideration by
the number of intimate male partners, their connection to their school and community, family
relations, and using methods of contraception. These different attributes decreased the
adolescents pregnancy risk and decreases their risky behavior. The study is only on women who
have seeked to obtain clinic services, thus this does not cover all women in this population. The
study set out to answer if having intervention based programing for the young women would
help them and decrease their pregnancy risk along with teaching them how to be safe when
having sex. One of the statistics that drove their study to be relevant is that nearly 1/3rd of
young women become pregnant at least once by age 20. (pg 2, Sieving) Even though birth rates
have decreased, this is still an alarming statistic.
A couple of the issues that the researchers wanted to address in this intervention study
was to provide more information on contraceptive methods and to see if this education would
increase the regular usage of condoms or consistent use of hormonal birth control. Another issue
that they wanted to try and improve was the ladies relationships with their partners, family,
school and community. All of these things were addressed between the professional case
managers, as well as the peer educators.

II.

The Research

The study was on 253 girls who were ages 13-17 and sexually active, that attended the
clinic they were using for their sample. No women who did not use the clinic services were
allowed to be in this study. These young women had to fall into the researcher's criteria to be
offered the chance to be in the 18 month study. Some of the qualifications were to have a clinic
visit with a negative pregnancy test, high risk sexual behaviors, aggressive behaviors, and other
behavioral risks, among other things were considered. The women only needed one or more of
these factors to be considered a potential participant in this study. The research hypothesis was
that the intervention would decrease the precursors of teen pregnancy and target specific personal
and behavioral attributes in order to bring about this decrease.
Once they had the 253 adolescent women, they divided them up into a control group and
the intervention group. The control group gave the researchers a baseline of what to compare the
intervention to; they did not participate in any of the intervention meetings or educational
programing. All of the women had to fill out surveys before any of the intervention started, and
then again after twelve months in the program/control group. There was a 25 dollar reward to
complete the surveys. So the women had the opportunity to take both and earn fifty dollars..
These would measure sexual risk behaviors and psychosocial factors that have been listed to
change because of this intervention program.
The intervention program had many components in order to cover all aspects of these
young women's lives to make their risky behaviors decrease. The intervention was mostly to
lower their risk of pregnancy but also have a focus on their other behaviors that would contribute
to an overall risky sex life. One portion of the intervention was having a case manager have one
on one meetings each month with the participants. These visits would cover important subjects
like emotional health, healthy relationships, safe sex and other topics. The case manager would

create a trusting relationship with the different girls to increase the amount that they adhere to the
intervention practices. The next component is peer education and service learning. The peer
educators were trained for 15 weeks and were there to teach their peers on different topics of
healthy behaviors. The service learning was a way for the women to build teamwork and
leadership skills. This also made them more involved in their community, which was one of the
behaviors that the researchers wanted to effect through this intervention.
Two major things that were measured by this study were the number of male sex partners
that participants have had vaginal intercouse with in the last six months and if they have
consistently used a contraceptive method in the last 6 months. The methods were broken down
into hormonal, dual method (condoms and hormonal pills) or condoms only. The researchers
used statistical analysis programs to compare the different variables that they were studying
between the beginning of the study to the twelve month mark, as well as the differences between
the control group and the intervention group.

III.

The Conclusions