141st APHA Annual Meeting

In This section

283993
Condom availability in schools: One school district's journey

Monday, November 4, 2013 : 12:54 PM - 1:06 PM

M. Kathleen Murphy, DNP, RN, FNP-BC , UTMB School of Nursing, University of Texas Medical Branch-School of Nursing, Galveston, TX
High rates of sexually transmitted infections (STI) and their concomitant health impacts affect student health. Many adolescents are armed with the facts about protecting themselves from STIs, but do not use well-known strategies (abstinence, condoms) because they do not pre-plan. From a developmental perspective, pre-planning to decrease is risk is inconsistent with adolescence. The CDC encourages better reproductive health education, but also states “children and teens need to know about condom use.” Condom use mitigates the communicable disease risk associated with unprotected sexual encounters. When combined with education, access to information, supplies, support for healthy decision making, and consultation with health care professionals, mitigating the risk associated with sexual behaviors is possible. One school district analyzed their Youth Risk Behavior Survey data to determine their district STI risk profile, and used the data to inform the community, propose policy and practice changes and implement a condom availabilty program. The barriers, challenges, funding, and success of their program will be discussed.

Learning Areas:
Protection of the public in relation to communicable diseases including prevention or control
Public health or related nursing

Learning Objectives:
Identify communicable disease risk among the adolescent school population. Assess community readiness for condom availabilty in schools. Demonstrate how data informs policy and practice.

Keywords: Condom Use, School Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have 15 years experience as a school nurse, school health services director and public health nurse. I was reponsible for the implementation of this program in a large urban school district.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.