Promoting Adolescent Healthy Relationships (The About Us Program): Protocol for a Randomized Clinical Trial.

Area of Science:

• Adolescent development and sexual health.
• Public health interventions in school settings.

Background:

• Romantic relationships are crucial for adolescent development, with most sexual activity occurring within them.
• Adolescents often lack positive role models and skills for healthy relationship building.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test the impact of the "About Us" healthy relationships intervention in California school-based health centers (SBHCs).
• To assess the intervention's effectiveness using a randomized controlled trial (RCT).

Main Methods:

• A 7-site, 2-group parallel RCT with a 3:2 treatment-to-control ratio for adolescents aged 14-18.
• Data collected at baseline, 3 months, and 9 months post-intervention.
• Primary outcome: prevalence of unprotected vaginal or anal sex in the past 3 months, assessed 9 months post-intervention.

Main Results:

• Baseline data collected from 533 participants (316 treatment, 217 control) between February 2018 and March 2020.
• Follow-up data collection continued through May 2021.
• Study registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (#NCT03736876).

Conclusions:

• The "About Us" program integrates developmental science to address motivations and emotions in sexual decision-making.
• SBHCs are an understudied setting for relationship and sexual health promotion.
• COVID-19 pandemic disruptions impacted programming and data collection, affecting study attrition.