General adaptation guidelines for evidence-based sexual health programs for adolescents

Significant progress has been made in developing and disseminating evidence-based interventions designed to prevent HIV and unintended pregnancy among adolescents. Adaptation guidance is needed. Practitioners often need to make changes to the interventions to respond to community needs, and they need guidance on how to do so without compromising the intervention's core components or fidelity.

The General Adaptation Guidelines provide sex education practitioners (program planners, researchers, educators)clear and practical guidance to assist them in making planned adaptations to their sexual health interventions.

Learnings from the General Adaptation Guidelines: * A compilation of several intervention specific Adaptation Kits created with developers; * Defines common adaptation terms: informed adaptation, fidelity, core components (content, pedagogy, implementation); * Presents an adaptation framework - green light adaptations refer to adaptations that can and should be made (go!), yellow light adaptations refer to adaptations that can be made with very special care and consideration of several factors (caution!), and red light adaptations refer to adaptations that should not be made because they significanlty veer from fidelity to core components(stop!). * A sample of common adaptations by categories follow. Green Light: changing the character names or scenes in role plays, adding local myths to debunk, adding processing questions. Yellow Light: implementing in a different setting, omitting or substituting videos, modifying condom demonstration activities. Red Light: omitting condom demonstration activities, shortening the overall length of the intervention, and substituting other activities for role plays that do not allow for youth skill practice.

Online adaptation resources will be shared.