Building a teen-friendly primary care practice: Assessing staff attitudes toward teen sexuality and contraception

Teen pregnancy is once again a growing problem in the US. In an effort to reduce the rate of unintended teen pregnancy in a network of family health centers, we surveyed staff members regarding their attitudes toward adolescent sexuality and contraception. We analyzed results by job category, region (urban vs rural), and site. We correlated staff attitudes with health centers' adolescent pregnancy rates and contraception prescribing patterns. This information helped us to design a multifaceted, interdisciplinary program to improve the contraceptive services to our adolescent patients.

The presenters will discuss the survey they conducted in a New York State network of family health centers in the context of the epidemiology of teen pregnancy in the US. This presentation includes goals, methods, response rate, and limitations as well as how staff attitude correlates with health centers' adolescent pregnancy rates and contraception prescribing patterns. We will then discuss interdisciplinary interventions that were implemented with the health centers and the impact they had on clinical behavior and patient outcomes.

In order to, attract teenagers to our offices and address their reproductive health needs, we must make our offices more teen-friendly. Teen-friendly offices emphasize confidentiality, open-access appointment systems, active outreach, patient-centered counseling, a wide range of services, an opportunistic approach to screening, and easy access to public insurance programs. Making an office teen-friendly requires interdisciplinary cooperation and change. Simply educating clinicians isn't enough; all staff members must work together to meet adolescents' needs.