Using chat and text technologies to answer sexual and reproductive health questions: A pilot conducted by Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood is developing the capacity to use new technologies to bring young people immediate answers to their personal sexual health questions anytime, anywhere, from a source they trust. In this way, young people can receive the sexuality information and services they need in the manner in which they want to receive them. This initiative addresses two seemingly opposing preferences: young people often feel that they need personalized, situation-specific advice, and they prefer to communicate via anonymous methods such as texting and online chatting. In this workshop, Planned Parenthood will provide an overview of results from the first year of a program to provide both chat and text as an option for answering questions about sexual health and sexuality.

The results to be presented include the demographics of who uses these options, a thematic analysis of concerns raised, and the types of sexual health services needed. In addition, outcome evaluations related to whether the service has immediately reduced clients' anxiety will be presented. Lessons learned related to recruiting, training and supervising of staff, launching and monitoring the services, limitations of the current models, and scaling the program to better reach more of our intended audience will be presented.

Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of sexual health services and sexuality education in the United States, providing sexual health services to more than 3 million people in its health centers, sex education to 1.2 million people, and information about sexuality to more than 24 million visitors online annually.