Efforts to Enhance Health Center Youth Friendly Reproductive Health Services

Despite declines, US teen birth rates remain high among developed countries and disparities by race/ethnicity persist.  These outcomes may be attributed to disparities in adolescents’ access to and utilization of reproductive health services.  Changes at the health care delivery systems level that focus on ensuring the provision of accessible, affordable, and evidence-based clinical practices are necessary to increase use of these services by teens.

In partnership, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) have implemented from 2010-2015 a 5-year multi-component community-wide teen pregnancy prevention initiative in 8 state and community organizations. Strategies to improve community-clinical linkages were included to ensure that youth have access to both quality community resources and quality clinical services.

This presentation will focus on the clinical component of the initiatives’ efforts to enhance youth-friendly reproductive health services by 1) improving evidence-based clinical practice implementation and 2) offering tiered, client-centered counseling on a broad range of contraceptives, including the most effective methods.  A funded community-organization from Spartanburg County, SC will be highlighted for the work on the clinical component, including their collaboration with health center partners to improve implementation of evidence-based clinical practices and address barriers to long-acting reversible contraception use among teens and health care providers. 

Providing access to youth-friendly, evidence-based, and client-centered reproductive health services can facilitate adolescent utilization of reproductive health services and increase the use of the most effective contraceptive methods among sexually active adolescents.