Training and Workshops
Workshops focus on strategies for improving access to contraception for teens; youth-friendly clinical practices; outreach to pharmacists; developing youth-adult partnerships; linking youth-serving organizations and family planning clinics; managing controversy; model, evaluated programs for providing contraception to teens; and statistics and trends related to teens' contraceptive use.
Publications
Fact sheets, issue briefs, lesson plans, and teen pamphlets related to contraception.
South Carolina’s educators, family planning staff, and pharmacists can play a key role in helping the state’s sexually active youth to prevent pregnancy, HIV, and STIs, ensuring that they have access to contraceptive information and services.
South Carolina ranks well above many other states in the contraceptive information and services it makes available to youth. The state has 76 publicly funded family planning clinics that offer contraceptive care to 56 percent of the adult women and 41 percent of the teenage women in need of such services. Still, that leaves 44 percent of low-income adult women and 59 percent of teenage women unserved.
South Carolina’s laws addressing contraception also place the state among the best in the nation. The state has expanded Medicaid eligibility for family planning services to anyone whose income is less than a state-specified level. While it has not mandated insurance coverage of contraception, neither has it mandated a refusal clause. The state requires discussion and/or provision of EC in emergency rooms. It allows anyone age 16 or older as well as married and emancipated or mature minors to consent to contraceptive services. At the same time, polls have shown that many professionals in South Carolina continue to hold myths and mistaken beliefs about contraception, including EC.
Here are some resources that may be of value to education and health care professionals. The resources include:
- A compendium of clinic-based and contraceptive access programs that have been effective in promoting healthy sexual behaviors, improving condom or contraceptive use, and reducing teen pregnancy
- Lesson plans for educators offering negotiation and communication skills and medically accurate information about contraception
- Articles for improving youth-friendly access in family planning clinics
- Desources on improving youth-friendly access in pharmacies
- The Initiative’s key evaluation findings
A. Evaluated, Effective Contraceptive Access Programs for Teens
Science & Success - Programs That Work to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, HIV & Sexually Transmitted Infections in the United States
This 2008 publication highlights 26 U.S.-based programs that have been proven effective at delaying sexual initiation or reducing sexual risk taking among teens. 14 of the 26 programs demonstrated a statistically significant delay in the timing of first sex. 14 programs helped sexually active youth to increase condom use and nine programs demonstrated success at increasing use of other contraception. 13 programs showed reductions in the number of sex partners and/or increased monogamy. Seven programs assisted sexually active youth to reduce the frequency of sexual intercourse, and 10 programs helped sexually active youth to reduce the incidence of unprotected sex.
B. Lesson Plans for Educator
Providing instruction about growth and development, sex, and sexuality can be challenging! Here we provide sample exercises to get the lessons started, ensure a safe space for everyone, and convey complete and accurate information on many reproductive and sexual health topics.
C. Creating a Youth-Friendly Family Planning Clinic
This needs and assets assessment tool offers clinic administrators and staff an overview of “best practices” for family planning service delivery. Categorized into sections, the tool gives you an opportunity to learn about the latest research and best practices and then, using this information, rate how your clinic fares.
D. Creating a Youth-Friendly Pharmacy
The Pharmacy Access Partnership is a recognized leader in promoting the role of pharmacists as community health providers, and pharmacies as an additional, convenient and integral point of reproductive healthcare access.
Pharmacy Access Partnership works to:
- Develop and facilitate new policies
- Advance new practices in pharmacies and clinics
- Create more educational opportunities for consumers in pharmacies
- Promote greater public awareness.
Pharmacy Access Partnership’s Youth-Friendly Pharmacy Initiative seeks to make pharmacies a useful access point to meet teens’ reproductive health needs. While Plan B® and Next Choice™ are now available over-the-counter for consumers 17 and older, teens under the age of 17 can still access EC with a prescription at a pharmacy. Youth-friendly pharmacy services are designed to recognize and address the unique challenges, difficulties and obstacles facing adolescents. For example:
- Teens tend to wait longer to seek EC because often times they cannot access a provider or pay for services. In a consumer survey conducted in 2004 in California pharmacies, respondents under the age of 16 took more than 24 hours longer to get EC from the pharmacy than older women.
- Focus group research conducted by the Pacific Institute for Women’s Health with adolescent African American and Latina girls in California shows that over half of participants frequented the pharmacy regularly, but only 15 percent knew they could obtain EC directly at the pharmacy. Lack of awareness about EC in general appears to be higher among young women than their adult counterparts.
- Teens identified specialized approaches to attract, serve and retain their peers as reproductive health clients, including: providers trained to address adolescents’ specific biological, psychological and health needs, reasonably priced services, flexible hours, confidentiality, in-store privacy, provider respect, accurate information, and culturally competent services.
E. Key Evaluation Findings of the South Carolina Emergency Contraception Initiative
In 2006 and 2009, Dr. Bill Philliber of Philliber Research Associates worked with the South Carolina Emergency Contraception Initiative to conduct two baseline and follow up surveys. The first survey, conducted by “secret shoppers” (someone posing as a customer in need of EC), assessed access to EC in pharmacies; the second survey examined changes in youth knowledge.
Pharmacy Survey
Approximately 270 pharmacies were surveyed in both 2006 and 2009. In 2006, only 66 percent of pharmacies offered EC. This figure increased to 90 percent by 2009. Secret shoppers reported that pharmacy personnel were much more helpful to women seeking EC in 2009. Only 22 percent were reported to be helpful in 2006, yet 49 percent were helpful in 2009.
Despite these favorable findings, the survey also indicated continued challenges and barriers. Fifty-one percent of pharmacies were reported to be either not helpful or had a neutral attitude towards the callers, indicating a greater need for youth-friendly services. Further, 46 percent of urban pharmacies and 57 percent of rural pharmacies were unaware of new FDA rules allowing 17-year-old women to obtain EC without a prescription. In addition, because the cost of Plan B has increased 33 percent since 2006, it is important for pharmacies to offer the generic Next Choice; less than 20 percent mentioned the availability of this new product.
General Youth Knowledge Survey
A total of 1,062 people participated in the EC Knowledge Survey project across the two years. Respondents included students on college campuses (n=341) and young people ages 16-24 in shopping malls, at street fairs, and in other community settings (n=577). A smaller sample of adults were also surveyed (n=144). The survey was designed to explore such questions as, among others: Who knows about EC? Who has used EC? Who knows someone who has used EC? What do people know about EC?
Approximately 20 percent more young people had heard of EC and knew where to get it in 2009, as compared to 2006. Approximately 11 percent of the general youth population reported prior EC use in 2009, as compared to 7 percent in 2006. With regard to college students, approximately 16 percent reported prior use in 2007 as compared to 22 percent in 2009.
Knowledge about EC among the general youth population increased significantly during the project period. Highlights include:
- The percentage of young people who knew the correct timing for EC more than doubled.
- The percentage of young people who knew that EC can be obtained in non-hospital settings increased by almost half.
- The percentage of youth who knew that EC will not cause harm to a fetus more than doubled.
- The percentage of youth who knew they can use EC more than once in their lifetime increased by more than half.
- A slightly smaller percentage of youth in 2009 did not know that emergency contraception is not as effective in preventing pregnancy as regular birth control pills.
There were also substantial changes among college students in three areas.
- Approximately twice as many knew that EC does not cause side effects.
- A third more knew that minors do not need permission to obtain EC.
- Almost twice as many young people in 2009 knew that EC will not cause harm to a fetus.
Other Indicators of Project Impact
In addition to the surveys, the project conducted pre- and post-tests among 147 college students to assess increases in knowledge after an EC workshop or training. There was a nearly 60% increase in total knowledge after EC workshops. In addition, following a workshop/training:
- Three times as many students knew that EC had no long-term side effects.
- Four times as many students knew that EC did not harm the fetus.
- Forty-five percent more of the participants knew that EC was not a type of abortion.
