What Works for Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health: Lessons from Experimental Evaluations of Programs and Interventions

Dec 22, 2014
  • Description

This brief synthesizes lessons learned from 118 evaluations of reproductive health programs located in Child Trends' database of social interventions designed for children and youth—LINKS (Lifecourse Interventions to Nurture Kids Successfully). Evaluations were selected if they were implemented primarily with youth under the age of 18, did not target expectant/pregnant and parenting adolescents, and assessed impacts on pregnancies, births, STIs, or the reproductive health behaviors that lead to these outcomes. Although psychosocial outcomes (such as attitudes or intentions) are also important predictors of teen births and STIs, they were not included in this synthesis because of space limitations. The goal was to examine whether and how programs affect outcomes for youth and adolescents, so no limit was placed on the type, structure, frequency, and duration of the programs. Therefore, this synthesis includes programs designed for and specifically targeting reproductive health outcomes, and those which were not aimed at impacting reproductive health outcomes but measured at least one of the following outcomes:

SEXUAL INITIATION– the percentage of teens who ever had sex;

FREQUENCY OR RECENCY OF SEX– how often or how recently youth had had sex; number of sexual partners;

ANAL/ORAL SEX – the initiation or frequency of anal or oral sex, or number of anal or oral sex partners;

SEX UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF DRUGS OR ALCOHOL;

CONDOM USE — including recent use and consistency;

CONTRACEPTIVE USE — including any use, hormonal method use, use of long-acting reversible methods (LARCs), such as IUDs and implants;

CONTRACTING STIS; or

PREGNANCY OR BIRTH.