Cocreating First Steps, a Toolkit to Improve Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Services: Qualitative...

Adolescent voices are frequently excluded from sexual and reproductive health (SRH) research. Despite progressive policies and access to SRH care, adolescents in New York City who live in neighborhoods with high poverty and those who identify as Black or Hispanic experience poor SRH outcomes, including high rates of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

This qualitative study aims to guide Black and Hispanic adolescent mothers in identifying problem areas in SRH care and cocreate health service recommendations with input from health care stakeholders to address those problems and improve SRH experiences.

Through ethnographic interview methods, adolescent mothers in New York City shared their experiences from before pregnancy through parenting and identified problem areas in adolescent SRH services and education. Data were analyzed inductively and using situational analysis. Adolescent participants attended 2 cocreation workshops. In the first workshop, they confirmed interview findings, set priorities, and created rough prototypes. Following the first workshop, health care providers were interviewed to inform refinement of the rough prototypes. Adolescents further developed prototypes in the second cocreation workshop and named the resulting toolkit.

A total of 16 adolescent mothers participated in 47 interviews, and 10 (63%) participants attended at least 1 cocreation workshop. They highlighted deficiencies in sexual health education and emphasized the roles of health care providers and parents, rather than schools, in improving it. Adolescent participants designed recommendations for adolescents and health care providers to support quality conversations between adolescents, parents, and health care providers and created a preappointment checklist to help young patients initiate conversations with health care providers. Young participants stressed that sex education should address topics beyond sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy, such as emotional health and relationships. They created guidelines for health care providers outlining communication strategies to provide respectful, unbiased care and contraceptive counseling that encourages adolescent autonomy. Participants shared specific suggestions for how to support young parents respectfully. Health care stakeholders recommended adding information on confidential care; supporting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth; and focusing on improving communication between health care providers and patients rather than creating educational materials. In the second workshop, adolescent participants revised the prototypes based on feedback from health care stakeholders and named the toolkit of recommendations First Steps.

This study highlighted the important roles that parents and health care workers play in adolescent sexual health education. Cocreated toolkits offer a practical approach for health care providers to engage adolescents and their parents in meaningful, adolescent-centered conversations that can promote health, safety, and well-being.